'-A • sU-? ■ v'w.'v: ■■ ■..,. T''- ■ • X I B R.A R.Y OF THE U N I VERS ITY or ILLINOIS 947.06 C28WwaE •4 I ^ ; r'*'? . 'V : THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS THE [ tOMANCE OF AN EMPRESS CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF K. WALISZEWSKI V WITH A PORTRAIT NEW D. APPLETON YORK AND COMPANY 1905 AutJwrizei Kdiiidn. I \ CONTENTS PART I— THE GRAND DUCHESS BOOK I— FROM STETTIN TO MOSCOW CHAP. PAGB I. CHILDHOOD, • . • ‘ 3 II. ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE, 1 6 III. THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE, ... 66 BOOK II— IN PURSUIT OF POWER I. THE YOUNG COURT, ....... 97 II. THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE, I43 III. THE VICTORY, 1 76 PART W—THE EMPRESS BOOK I— THE WOMAN I. APPEARANCE— CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT, . 205 II. IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES, 241 BOOK II— THE SOVEREIGN I. THE ART OF RULING, . 262 II. HOME POLICY, 284 III. FOREIGN POLICY, 3^0 CONTENTS yAii ( . BOOK III— THE FRIEND OF THE PHILOSOPHERS CHAP. PAGE I. LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES, J . CATHERINE AS A WRITER, . III. CATHERINE AND EDUCATION, 330 353 361 BOOK IV— INNER ASPECTS I. HOME LIFE, . . 371 II. FAMILY LIFE — THE GRAND DUKE PAUL, . . . 397 III. PRIVATE LIFE— FAVOURITISM, 419 PART I THE GRAND DUCHESS BOOK I FROM STETTIN TO MOSCOW CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD I Fifty years ago there was consternation in a little German town : a railway was to be brought through it, removing, after the manner of rail- ways, old landmarks, cutting through old dwell- ings, levelling old promenades, where generation after generation had taken the air. Among the objects thus menaced by impious engineers, to the utter despair of the people in the neighbour- hood, one tree, a venerable lime-tree, seemed to be held in special reverence. In spite of all, the railway was brought through. The lime-tree was not, however, cut down ; it was taken up by the roots and transplanted elsewhere. As a special distinction it was set up opposite the new railway station, where it showed its insensibility to the honour by withering away. Then it was made into two tables : one of them was presented to Queen Elizabeth of Prussia, the other to Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of Russia. The inhabitants of Stettin gave to this tree the name of Kaiserlinde, imperial lime-tree, and, 4 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA according to their account, it had been planted by a German princess, then known as Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst (or, more familiarly, Figchen), who had been wont to play with the townspeople’s children in the market-place, and who had since become, they knew not how. Empress of Russia, under the name of Catherine the Great. Catherine had indeed passed a part of her child- hood in the old Pomeranian city. Was she born there? It is not often that the old dispute over the birthplace of Homer comes to be renewed over the birthplaces of the great personages of modern history. This uncertainty in the case of Catherine is one of the special peculiarities of her career. No register of any parish in Stettin has kept a trace of her name. In the similar case of the Princess of Wiirtemberg, wife of Paul I., the explanation is easy : the child was no doubt bap- tized by a clergyman of the Protestant church, not attached to a parish. But a note has been dis- covered — apparently authentic — indicating Dorn- burg as the place where Catherine was born and baptized ; and grave historians have founded on this datum the strangest suppositions. Dornburg was the family seat of the family of Anhalt-Zerbst zu Dornburg — that is to say, of Catherine’s family. Had not her mother stayed there about 1729, and had she not frequent occasions of seeing a young prince, barely sixteen years of age, who was enduring, not far from there, a tedious existence with a disagreeable father? This young prince, afterwards known as Frederick the Great, has been designated by a German ‘his- torian, Sugenheim, as the ‘father incognito’ of Catherine. I /Masson, whose conviction we should find it /ard to share. At this rate we might indulge '^in similar suppositions in regard to every illustrious birth in the history of the eighteenth century. Catherine, then, who was later to be called Catherine the Great, was born, according to all appearances, at Stettin, and her parents, by law as by nature, so far as we know, wefe called Prince Christian-August of Zerbst-Dornburg, and Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth of Holstein, his legiti- mate wife. A time was to come, as we shall see, when the least actions of this child, so obscurely brought into the world, were to be traced day py day, and almost hour by hour. It was her irevenge upon destiny. But what, in 1729, would be signified by the birth of a little Princess of Zerbst ? The princely house so named, one- of those with which the Germany of the period was swarming, formed one of the eight branches of the house of Anhalt. Up to the time when an unexpected chance brought unexampled fame, none of these branches had attained any particular distinction, and within a short time the final extinction of the whole line had cut short this dawn of notoriety. Without history up to 1729, the house of Anhalt-Zerbst had ceased to exist in 1793. II parents of Catherine did not live at urg. Her father had something else to do : k in fact, to make his way in the world. 'H A letter of Prince Christian- August of Anhai Zerbst, the official father of the future Empres^ seems to take away all appearance of truth from this hazardous conjecture. It is dated from Stettin, May 2, . 172Q , and states that on that very day, at half-past two in the morning, a daughter had been born to him in that town. This daughter can be no other than Catherine. Christian-August ought at least to have known where his children were born, even if he were a little uncertain as to how they came into the world. And further, there is no proof whatever that Dornburg had received within its walls the mother of Catherine, not long before the birth of the latter: indeed, the contrary seems well established. It is far enough from Dornburg and from Stettin, it is at Paris that the Princess of Zerbst appears to have passed a part at least of the year 1728. Frederick, as is well known, never went there, though indeed he nearly lost his head in trying to go. But the imagination of German historians is inexhaustible. In default of Frederick, there was at Paris in 1728, in the Russian embassy, a young man, the bastard of an illustrious family, who certainly must have associated with the Princess of Zerbst. Behold us on the trail of another romance, another anonymous paternity ! The young man was called Betzky, and became afterwards a personage of importance. He died in St. Petersburg at an advanced age, and it was reported' that Catherine, who showered k.' and gracious attentions upon the old man accustomed, when she visited him, to bend his arm-chair and kiss his hand. T enough for the German translator of CHILDHOOD 9 teachers and governesses were at that time to be found in all the German houses of any im- portance ; one of the indirect consequences of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They taught the French language, the French manners, and the French gallantry. They taught what they knew, and most of them knew nothing else. Thus Figchen had Mile. Cardel. She had also a French chaplain, Peraud, and a writing- master, also French, called Laurent. Some native masters completed this well-furnished collection of pedagogues. A certain Wagner taught Figchen her maternal language. For music she had another German, named Roellig. In later days it often pleased Catherine to call up the recollection of these first instructors of her youth, half tenderly, half with a sort of wicked childish wit. She gave a place apart to Mile. Cardel, ‘ who knew almost everything without having learnt anything, very much like her scholar ’ ; who told her that she had ‘ an awkward disposition ’ ; and who was always jtelling her to keep back her chin. ‘ She con- sidered it excessively sharp,’ Catherine tells us, fand she said that by sticking it out I knocked ifc'ainst everybody I came across.’ The good Illle. Cardel had probably little thought of the encounters to which her pupil was destined. I tit she did more than setting up her mind and Jc;tting her chin into line. She made her read Kacine, Corneille, and Moliere. She contested her with the German Wagner, with his Teutonic pedantry, his Pomeranian diilness, the insipidity df his Prufungen, of which Catherine always ■ept a painful recollection. Certainly she com- lO CATH±LKiI\iJti. li, wi’ Ji'v C/ municated to her something of her own tempera- ment, the Parisian temperament, we should say nowadays — quick, alert, ready-witted. And — must we admit it ? — she rendered her a still greater service, to all appearance, in saving her from her mother, and not only from the blows that she was wont to shower down for a yes or a no — ‘ out of ill-temper, never for any reason’ — but especially from that quite other temperament that belonged, as we shall see later, to the wife of Christian- August : a tem- perament made up of intrigue, of deception, of low instincts and petty ambitions, in which was reflected the whole soul of many genera- tions of Germanic princelings. After all. Mile. Cardel really deserved the furs that her pupil hastened to Send her on arriving at St. Peters- burg. An important part of the education thus or- ganised was made by Figchen’s frequent journeys in the company of her parents. Residence at Stettin had no particular attractions for a young/ woman bent on pleasure and a young military commandant who had been through half Europe. Chances of change w ere thus welcome, and with a large family connection such chances were nev/ wanting. There were Zerbst, Hamburg, Brunt wick, Plutin, everywhere relations, everywhere hospitality, not vevy sumptuous as a rule, b "^^ordial. It was at Eutin, in 1739, that the Pri /cess Sophia saw for the first time the man who [she was to deprive of a throne after havin 1 received it from him. Peter Ulric of Holstein, so of a cousin-german of her mother, was then elevei years of age. She herself was ten. This firs CHILDHOOD II meeting, whicii, at the time, passed unnoticed, did not give her a favourable impression — at least so she declared later, when she came to write her memoirs. The child seemed to her a weakling. She was told that he had a bad disposition, and, what appears incredible, that he had already a taste for drink. Another excursion left in young imagination a much more profound trace. In 1742 or 1743, at Brunswick, at the house of the Dowager-Duchess who had brought up her mother, a canon of the church, expert in chiro- mancy, bethought himself to see in her hand no less than three crowns, though 'he could see none in the hand of the pretty Princess of Bevern, for whom they were seeking just then a high marriage. To find a crown along with a husband — that was the common dream of all these Ger- man princesses. At Berlin Figchen saw Frederick, but without his paying her more attention than was natural, or her caring greatly what he thought of her. He was a great king on the threshold of a mag- nificent career ; she was but a little girl, destined, to all appearance, to be the ornament of some infinitesimal court lost in the depths of the empire. All this was but the common life and education of all the German princesses of the time. Later on Catherine attempted, by a sort of coquetry, to bridge over the gaps and insufficiencies of this edu- cation. ‘ What would you have ? ’ she said ; ‘ I was brought up wdth the idea of marrying some little neighbouring prince, and I was taught as much as that demanded. Mile. Cardel and I had no thought of thisV The Baroness von 12 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Prlntzen, maid of honour to the Princess of Zerbst, did not hesitate to declare that, on her part, with the closest opportunities of observing the studies and progress of the future empress, she had never seen in her any exceptional qualities or faculties. She expected her to turn out ‘ an ordinary woman.’ Mile. Cardel was equally far from thinking, to all appearance, that in looking after the behaviour of her pupil she was {as the enthusiastic Diderot was one day to declare) ‘ the candlestick bearing the light of the age.’ Ill There was something, nevertheless, in this mediocre existence that might already remind the Princess Sophia of her future destiny. She was but a little German Princess, brought up in a little German town, with a desolate sandy waste for horizon. But on this region lay the mighty shadow of a neighbouring power. This very province, not so long before, had seen a strange uniform in its towns, had felt the growing pres- tige of a power, newly come into Europe, and already terrifying and astonishing the nations, awakening infinite hopes and fears. At Stettin even, the details of the siege held against the armies of the great White Czar were fresh in all memories. In the family of Figchen, Russia, the great and mysterious Russia, her innumerable soldiers, her exhaustless riches, her absolute sovereigns, furnished a favourite theme for dis- cussion, into which, perhaps, there came some vague longings, some obscure presentiments. Why not? With the marriages which had united CHILDHOOD »3 y daughter of Peter I. to a Duke of Holstein, a Prand-daughter of Ivan, the brother of Peter, to % Duke of Brunswick, a whole network of alli- an(i;es, affinities, and reciprocal attractions had been established between the great monarchy of the North and the vast tribe of meagre German sovereignties bordering on the immense empire. And the family of Figchen was brought into particular association with all this. When, in 1739, Figchen met her cousin Peter Ulric at Eutin, she knew that his mother had been a Russian Czarevna, a daughter of Peter the Great. She knew, too, the story of that other daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth, who had so nearly been her mother’s sister-in-law. And now, all unexpectedly, came the news of the accession to the crown of Russia of this very Princess, the sorrow ing.yf^z«z/(? of Prince Karl- August of Holstein. On December 9, 1741, by one of those cotips de thddtre which were so fre- quent in the history of the Northern court, Elizabeth had put an end to the reign of the little Ivan of Brunswick and to the regency of his mother. How the echo of this event must have sounded in the ears of Catherine and her family ! Separated by the cruelty of fate from the husband of her choice, the new Empress, it was known, kept a tender feeling, not only for the person of the young Prince, but for all his family. She had but lately asked for the por- traits of his surviving brothers : she was not likely to. forget his sister. The predictions of the palmist canon must have come back to the mind of Eigchen’s mother. Certainly she did not fail to write at once to her cousin, and to send her 14 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA congratulations. The reply was quite encoui; aging. Amiable, affectionate even, Elizabet.^ showed herself grateful for all these kind atten tions, and demanded yet another portrait — that of her sister, the Princess of Holstein, mother of Prince Peter Ulric. Evidently she was making a collection of them. What was all the mystery about The mystery was soon unveiled. In January 1742 Prince Peter Ulric, ‘the little devil,’ as the Czarina Anna Ivanovna was accustomed to call him, rendered uneasy by his too close relation- ship with the reigning house of Russia — the little cousin whom Figchen had one day met — dis- appeared suddenly from Kiel, where he usually lived, and reappeared a few weeks later at St. Petersburg. Elizabeth had sent for him in order to proclaim him solemnly as her heir. Here, at all events, was an occurrence of no uncertain significance. It was the Holstein blood — Figchen’s mother’s — that triumphed in Russia to the exclusion of that of Brunswick. Holstein or Brunswick, the posterity of Peter the Great or that of his elder brother Ivan, both deceased without direct male heirs : the whole history of the house of Russia since 1725 had been implicated in this dilemma ; now Holstein had got the upper hand, and the fortune of the new Prince Imperial, as yet scarcely established, began to reflect itself upon his obscure German relations. It extended even to Stettin. In the month of July 1742 the father of Figchen was raised by Frederick to the grade of Field- Marshal — a politeness evidently intended for Elizabeth and her nephew. In September a Secretary of CHILDHOOD 15 the Russian Embassy at Berlin brought to the Princess of Zerbst the portrait of the Czarina in a frame of maofnificent diamonds. At the end of the year Figchen accompanied her mother to Berlin, where the celebrated painter Pesne was intrusted with the painting of her portrait. Figchen knew that the portrait was to be sent to St. Petersburg, where, no doubt, Elizabeth would not be the only one to admire it. A year passed without bringing anything de- cisive. At the end of 1743. the whole family was found at Zerbst : the extinction of the eldest branch had recently caused the succession of Christian- August’s brother to the principality of that name. Christmas was gaily kept. There was this new good luck, there were doubtless some happy hopes for the future, dreams, per- haps, more audacious still. The new year was be- ginning gaily, when an express courier, who had ridden post-haste from Berlin, brought startling news to the petulant Jeanne-Elizabeth and her graver spouse. This time the oracles gave open voice, and palmistry won a clear triumph. The courier brought a letter from Briimmer, Master of the Household of the Grand Duke Peter, for- merly Peter Ulric of Holstein, and this letter was addressed to the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth inviting her to come at once, with her daughto to the Imperial Court of Russia. i6 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA CHAPTER II ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA — MARRIAGE I BrOmmer was an old acquaintance of the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth. He had been the tutor of the Grand Duke, and had doubtless accompanied his pupil to Eutin. His letter was long, and filled with minute directions. The Princess was to lose as little time as possible in preparing for the journey, and she was to reduce her suite to the bare necessary — a maid of honour, two maids, an officer, a cook, three or four lackeys. At Riga she would find a suitable escort, which would conduct her to the place of residence of the court. It was expressly stipulated that her husband was not to accompany her. She was to keep absolute silence as to the purpose of her journey. If she were questioned, she was to answer that she was going to see the Empress in order to thank her for all the kindness she had shown her. She might, however, confide in Frederick it., who was in the secret. A bill of exchange on a Berlin banker, to cover the ex- penses of the journey, accompanied the letter. The sum was modest — 10,000 roubles, — but it was important, Brummer explained, not to attract attention by sending a large sum. Once in Russia, the Princess should want for nothing. It was evidently in the name ot the Empress .that Brummer sent this invitation, so much like ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 17 an order, and these peremptory instructions. But he gave no further explanation as to the intentions of the Czarina. Another explained it for him. Two hours after the arrival of the first courier, a second followed, bearing a letter from the King of Prussia. Fre derick dotted all the is, and he did not fail to take to himself all the credit of Elizabeth’s choice of the young Princess of Zerbst to be the companion of his nephew and successor. He had in truth had something to do with it, and in this manner. Naturally, there had been no few matrimonial competitions in regard to ‘the little devil,’ now heir to so splendid a crown. Soon every notable person at court, the most intriguing court in Europe — from the ex-tutor of the Grand Duke, the German Briimmer, to the physician-in- ordinary of Elizabeth, the Frenchman Lestocq, — had a candidate of his own, and a following for his candidate. Now it was a French Princess, now a Saxon Princess, daughter of the King of Poland, now a sister of the King of Prussia. Backed by Bestoujef, the all-powerful Chancellor of the empire, the Saxon project had at one moment the greatest chances of success. ‘ The court of Saxony, rampant slave of Russia,’ wrote Frederick later, ‘ desired the success of Marianne, second daughter of the King of Poland, for the increase of its own credit. . . . The Russian ministers, whose venality would, I think, have put the Empress herself up to auction, sold a premature contract of marriage ■: they received large sums of money, and the King of Poland nothing but words.’ Sixteen years of age, pretty, well brought up, i8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA the Princess of Saxony was not merely a suitable natch ; the alliance would serve as basis of a ^ast combination, destined, so Bestoujef thought, to reunite Russia, Saxony, Austria, Holland, and England, three-quarters of Europe, against Prussia and France. The combination fell through, and P'rederick did his best to aid its fall. He refused, however, to checkmate it by putting forward his sister, the Princess Ulrica, who would have suited Elizabeth. ‘Nothing would be more barbarous,’ he said, ‘ than to sacrifice the Princess.’ For a time he left his envoy Mardefeldt to his own resources, which were small, and to those of his French colleague. La Chetardie, which, for the moment, were no better. Mardefeldt had been in disgrace for some time, and Elizabeth had been on the point of demand- ing his recall. As for La Chetardie, after having played so Important a role at the accession of the new Czarina, he was foolish enough to let slip a position for which he had fought so hard. He had left his post, and, on his return, had not met with the same favour. His court did nothing on his behalf, and obliged him to be always asking for instructions. He would inquire ‘if the king had still the same repugnance that he had shown at the accession of the Czarina to the marriage of the Grand Duke with one of the Princesses (avec une des Madames).’ But Frederick was on the watch. It was he who had had the idea of sending to St. Peters- burg the portrait painted by Pesne at Berlin. A surviving brother of the mother of Figchen, Prince August of Holstein, had been commis- sioned to present it to the Czarina. Pesne was ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 19 getting old, and the portrait, it appears, was not good. It had nevertheless the good fortune to please the Empress and her nephew. At the decisive moment, in November 1743, Mardefeldt received orders to put resolutely forward the Princess of Zerbst, or, if she would not do, one of the Princesses of Hesse- Darmstadt. In default of personal influence, the Prussian agent and his French colleague succeeded in winning over Briimmer and Lestocq, and victory (so La Chetardie testifles) was the price of this alliance. ‘ They have impressed upon the Czarina that a Princess of an important house would be less docile. . . . They have adroitly made use of some priest to insinuate to her Majesty that, seeing the small difference between the two religions, a Catholic Princess would be more dangerous.’ Perhaps in the same order of ideas they dwelt on the agreeable insignifi- cance of the Prince of Zerbst, ‘a good fellow in his way, but of a quite unusual stupidity,’ says La Chdtardie. In short, at the beginning of December, Elizabeth charged Briimmer to write the letter which, a few weeks later, revolu- tionised the peaceful court in which Catherine had grown up under the benevolent eye of Mile. Cardel. II The preparations of the Princess Jeanne- Elizabeth and her daughter were as brief as Briimmer could have desired. Figchen did not even wait for a new outfit. ‘ Two or three dresses, a dozen chemises, the same amount of 20 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Stocking'S and handkerchiefs ’ — that was all that she took with her. Since they were to want for nothing, haste and away ! ‘ She only lacks wings to g'o quicker,’ wrote Brlimmer to Elizabeth. There is no evidence that the Princess took much trouble to give any sort of ^clat to her daughter’s first appearance in Russia. In follow- ing the correspondence which she carried on at the time with Frederick, one is surprised to see how small a place was taken in her plans by the future Grand Duchess. Was it really on account of Figchen’s chances of marriage that she was takingtte^journey to Russia? It might well be doubted ; she scarcely makes the slightest allusion to it. It is of herself that she thinks chiefly, the vast projects that swarm in her brain, and that she is in hopes of developing on a stage worthy of her ; the services that she professes to render to her royal protector, and for which she seems to claim a decent recom- pense in advance. So we shall see her act at St. Petersburg and at Moscow. Did Figchen know what was in the air, and for what reason, good or bad, she had been told to pack up her things? The point is contested. She must have been aware that it was some- thing more than a simple excursion like those she had made to Hamburg and to Eutin. The extent and the vigour of the debates between her father and mother before leaving, the un- usual solemnity of the leave-taking with her uncle, the reigning Prince, Jean Louis, and the not less exceptional magnificence of the present — a beautiful blue stuff embroidered with silver wire — with which he accompanied his last ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 21 effusions : all that betokened something extra- ordinary. The departure took place on the 10th or 12th of Ja nuaQf and was without incident. .4:^ There is stHrsnown at the Rathhaus of Zerbst the cup in which the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth drank the health of the notabilities of the town, gathered together with great ceremony to bid her farewell. This is probably only a legend. One incident, however, occurred at the moment of departure. After having tenderly embraced his daughter. Prince Christian-August put in her hands a large book which he bade her preserve with care, adding, mysteriously enough, that she might soon have occasion to. consult it. At the same time he confided to his wife a manuscript in his handwriting, which she was to pass on to her daughter, after having absorbed and meditated upon its contents. The book was the treatise of Heineccius on the G'feek'~refey1o n. The manu- script fruit of Christian-August's Tecent watches and meditations was entitled Pro Menioria, and dealt chiefly with the question whether Rigchen could not, ‘by some arrangement or other,’ become Grand Duchess without changing her religion. This was the great concern of Chris- tian-August, and the conjugal controversy which had accompanied the preparations for departure, and which had awakened the attention of Figchen, had but this one object ; Christian August showing himself intractable on the subject, and Jeanne-Elizabeth much more dis- posed to admit the necessities imposed by the new destiny of her daughter. It was for this reason that Figchen’s father had resolved to 22 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA arm his daughter against the temptations that might fall in her way. The treatise of Heinec- cius was to serve this purpose. It was the heavy artillery of the fortress. In the Pro Memoria followed considerations and recom- mendations of another order, in which the German practical spirit had its share ; not without some reflection of the petty ways of a court like that of Zerbst or Stettin. The future -7^ Grand Duchess was advised to show the greatest respect and the most entire obedience towards those on whom her future would depend. She would place the good pleasure of the Prince her husband above that of all the world. She would avoid too intimate relations with no matter whom of her associates. She would speak to no one in asides in a public assembly. She would keep her pocket-money to herself, so as not to come under the dependence of a maitresse de cour. Finally, she would take care to meddle with none of the affairs of ( government. All this was expressed in a jargon which gives a curious specimen of the current language of the time, the German that Frederick pfofessed to despise — not without reason. ‘Nicht in Familiarite oder Badinage zu entriren, sondern allezeit einigen Egard sich mbglichst conserviren. In keine Regierungs- sachen zu entriren um den Senat nicht aigriren;’ and so forth. Two months later Figchen thanked her father with effusion for his ‘ gracious instructions.’ We shall soon see how much she profited by them. At Berlin, where the two princesses stayed for some days, the future Empress saw Erederick ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 23 jdie rirpgt fnr flip timp in her life. At ScTiwedt, on tKe Oder, she said good-bye for ever to her father, who had accompanied the travellers thus far. He returned to Stettin ; Jeanne- Elizabeth set out for Riga, by way of Stargard and Memel. The journey, especially at this time of the year, was anything but agreeable. There was no snow, but the cold was so intense that the two women were obliged to cover their faces with a mask. Then there were no com- fortable quarters in which to rest. The orders of Frederick, who had commended the Countess of Reinbek — the name under which the Princess was travelling — to the care of the Prussian burgo- masters and posting-house keepers, served them in little stead. . ‘ As the rooms in the posting- houses were not warmed,’ wrote the Princess, l‘we had to take refuge in the landlord’s room, twhich was just like a pig-sty ; husband, wife, watch-dog, fovvls, and children all slept pell-mell in cradles, beds, mattresses, and behind_the stove.’ It was w'orse still beyond Memel. There were not even post-horses to be had. Horses had to be borrowed from the peasants : not less than twenty- four were requfred to drag the four heavy berlines in which the Princess and her suite were travelling. Sledges had been fastened on behind the carriages, in preparation for the snow that might be found further north. This gave a more picturesque air to the caravan, but did not hasten its progress. The advance was slow, and Figchen had an indigestion through drinking the bfej* of the country. *^hey arrived at Mittau on the 5th of February, in a state of exhaustion. Here they met with a 24 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA y better reception, and the pride of Jeanne-Eliza- beth, secretly wounded by the familiarity that the Countess of Reinbek had had to endure from posting-house keepers, received its first satisfac- tion. There was a Russian garrison at Mittau, and the commandant. Colonel Voieikof, exerted himself to do the honours of the place to so near a relative of his sovereign. Next day they reached Riga. v^And suddenly, as in a pantomime, the scene changed. The letters of the Princess to her husband were quite effusive over this unexpected coup de thMtre ; the civil and military authorities presenting themselves at the entrance to the town, under the command of the Vice-Governor, Prince Dolgorouki, another high functionary, Siemiene Kirillovitch Narychkine, ex-ambassador at London, with a state chariot, cannon firing salutes on the way to the castle. And what splendour in the castle, prepared for the reception of these foreign guests ! Rooms magnificently decorated, sentries at all the doors, couriers on all the staircases, drums beating in the court. The salons, lit by a thousand tapers, are crowded with people : court etiquette, kissing of hands, obeis- ances to the ground, magnificent uniforms, mar- vellous toilettes, dazzling diamonds, velvet, silk, gold, a profusion never seen, never heard of before. To Jeanne-Elizabeth it seems as if her head is turning, as if she is in a dream. ‘ When I sit down to table,’ she writes, ‘ the trumpets in the house, the drums, flutes, and hautboys of the guard outside, sound a salute. It always seems to me that I must be in the suite of Her Imperial Majesty or of some great princess ; it never ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE enters into my head that all this is for poor me, accustomed as I am to have only the drum beaten for me, and sometimes not even that.’ She takes all the honour, however, and with the greatest delight. As for Figchen, we know nothing of the impression produced on her by all this riches and magnificence, so suddenly un- folded before her. Without doubt, it must have been profound. Russia, the great mysterious Russia, opened before her, giving her a foretaste of future splendours. On February 9th they set out for St. Peters- burg, where, by the will of the Czarina, they were to stay for a few days, before rejoining her at Moscow, and see that their toilet tes w ere con- formed to the fashion of the country. This~was Elizabeth’s delicate way of repairing the defi- ciences, known or guessed, of Figchen’s wardrobe. Assuredly, with her three dresses and her dozen chg mise s, the future Grand Duchess would cut a sorry figure at a court where all the splendours met together. The Czarina herself had 15,000 silk dresses, and 500Q pairs of shoes ! Catherine did not mind, in Idter days, recalling her poverty at the time when she arrived in her new country. She seemed to herself to have paid her debG Needless to say, the heavy German berlines with their odd equipment had been left behind at Mittau. Another sort of train was now to con- duct the two travellers on their way to fortune. The Princess of Zerbst describes it thus : ‘(i) a detachment with a lieutenant of cuirassiers of the corps of His Imperial Highness, named the Holstein Regiment; (2) the Chamberlain, Prince Narychkine ; (3) an equerry ; (4) an officer of the 20 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Isma'ilovski Guards, who fills the place of gentle- man-in-waiting ; (5) a major-domo ; (6) a confec- tioner ; (7) cooks and under-cooks, to I know not what extent ; (8) a butler and under-butler ; (9) a man for the coffee ; ( i o) eight lackeys ; ( 1 1 ) two grenadiers of the Ismailovski Guards; (12) two quarter-masters; (13) any number of sledges and stable-boys. — Among the sledges is one named Les Linges — Her Majesty’s linen, that is. It is scarlet, and decked with gold, lined inside with sable. It has silk cushions, coverings of the same stuff, above which is placed one that has just been sent me with the pelisses (a present from the Empress, brought by Narychkine). My daughter and I are to have this sledge, where we shall lie at full length. La Kayn (maid of honour of the Princess) has one to herself, not such a fine one.’ Further on, Jeanne-Elizabeth grows yet more eloquent over the perfections of the marvellous imperial sledge : ‘ It is extremely long. The top is like our German chairs. It is hung with red cloth striped with silver. There is fur all round the bottom. On that are placed a feather bed and damask cushions ; above that again, a satin covering, very neat and nice, on which one lies down. Under one’s head are yet more cushions, and one puts over one the furred coverings, so it is exactly like being in a bed. For the rest, the long space between the driver’s seat and the covered part serves for two purposes, and is at the same time useful in regard to the comfort of the conveyance, because, whatever rut it passes over in the road, it can pass over without jolting ; and the bottom of this space is made up of boxes, in which one can put wh?jt one likes. By day it serves for the ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 27 gentlemen in attendance, and by night for the servants, who can sleep there at full length. These constructions are drawn by six horses, harnessed two and two, and cannot be upset. It is all the invention of Peter the Great.’ Elizabeth had left St. Petersburg on the 21st January. Nevertheless, a large number of per- sonages belonging to the Court and a part of the diplomatic corps were still there. The journey to Moscow, at this epochj-wds-qtrite an affair. It necessitated the moving, not only of people, but of furniture as well. The departure of the sovereign displaced a hundred thousand people, and emptied an entire quarter of the town. The French and Prussian Ambassadors had no in- tention of letting any one whatever be beforehand with them in regard to the two princesses. La Chetardie, in his despatches to Amelot, boasted that he knew both mother and daughter intimately. He had recently met with them at Hamburg, on his return to Russia. Both exerted themselves to the utmost. The Princess of Zerbst found her- self in an atmosphere of homage, of assiduity, of forced flattery, in which already intrigues and rivalries began to show themselves. She was in her element, and she flung herself into it with delight, holding receptions, giving audiences, from morning to night, surrounding herself with pro- minent personages, essaying the most complicated moves of the game of politics. At the end of a week she was out of breath. Her daughter held out better. ‘ Figchen southenirt die Fatige besser als ich,’ wrote the princess to her husband. Afid she noted this trait, which seems already to indicate the future Semiramis: Tt is the grandeur 28 CAl'MERINE II. OF RUSSIA of her surroundings that sustains the courage of Figchen.’ The grandeur ! that, indeed, is what seemed most to impress the mind of this girl of fifteen, initiating her into the mysteries of her future destiny. At the same time she learnt of what this grandeur was made, and how it was attained. She was shown the barracks from which, so short a time before, Elizabeth had set out to conquer a throne. She saw the wild grenadiers of the Preobrajenski regiment, who accompanied the Czarina on the night of the 5th December 1741. And the one true lesson, the living lesson '~bf things, spoke to her awakening mind. In the mind of her mother certain anxieties intrude themselves into the intoxication of the present hour. Across the crowd of compliments there pierce certain dim warnings, certain veiled threats. The all-powerful Bestoujef remains always hostile to the projected alliance, and he has not thrown up the game. He counts on the Bishop of Novgorod, Ambrose J ouchkievitch, disapproving of the too close relationship between the Grand Duke and the Princess Sophia, or won over, as people said, by the Saxon court with a thousand roubles. The influence of this prelate is considerable. But Jeanne-Elizabeth has no lack of courage. She has, too, for her further confidence in her own success, two reasons worth all the arguments of her adversaries : — first, her extraordinary levity of temperament, which made her give herself the name of Will-o’- the-Wisp ; and secondly, her own opinion of her- self, of her resources for intrigue, of her aptitude in surmounting the gravest difficulties. What, ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 29 after all, has to be done ? Merely to overcome the opposition of a minister who is unfavourable to her. For that there is a remedy, which has already been discussed by her and Frederick on her passage through Berlin : it consists in sup- pressing the opposition by suppressing the minister. Frederick has had it in mind for some time. Well, she will overthrow Bestoujef as soon as she has reached Moscow. Briimmer and Lestocq will aid her. It is with this fine project in her mind that she once more starts on her way. Ill The journey, this time, is very different from that between Berlin and Riga. The posting- houses on the way ar-e- almost palaces. The sledges skim over the firm ice. They push forward night and day, in order that they may reach Moscow by the 9th of February, the Grand Duke’s birthday. For the last relay, at seventy versts from Moscow, sixteen horses are harnessed to the famous sledge constructed by Peter the Great, and the distance — some fifty miles — is covered without a stoppage in three hours. This headlong course is all but interrupted by a fatal accident. In passing through a village, the lumbersome vehicle, which once again carries the fortunes of Russia, grazes the corner of a cottage. The blow detaches from the roof of the sledge two great bars of iron, which come near crushing the two sleeping princesses. One, indeed, strikes Jeanne- Elizabeth on the neck, but the pelisse in which she is enveloped softens the 30 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA blow : her daughter is not even awakened. Two grenadiers of the Pr^obrajenski regiment, sitting on the front part of the sledge, are dashed to the ground, bleeding and dislocated. Leaving it to the villagers to pick them up, the horses are whipped up, and at eight o’clock in the even- ing they halt at Moscow, before the wooden palace, the Golovinski Dvarets, inhabited by the Czarina. Elizabeth, all impatience, is v/aiting for the new- comers behind a double row of courtiers. Her nephew, more impatient still, disregarding eti- quette, and not giving the travellers time to take off their furs, dashes into their room and gives them the warmest greeting. Soon after, they are conducted to the presence of the Czarina. The interview is all that could be wished ; nor does it pass without a touch of feeling, which seems of good augury. After having gazed attentively at the mother of the future Grand Duchess, the Empress turns aside and goes quickly out of the room. It is to hide her tears, for she has seen certain traits in the face of the princess which remind her of her unforgotten sorrow. The princess, instructed by Brummer, has not for- gotten to kiss the imperial hand, and Elizabeth is gratified by these testimonies of excessive respect. Next day, Figchen and her mother are simul- taneously raised to the ra k of Dames of the Order of Catherine, at tf desire of the Grand Duke, as Elizabeth asr res them. ‘ We are living like queens, my uaughter and I,’ writes the Princess of Zerbst to her husband. As for the all-powerful Bestoujef, there is no need for ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE the Princess to organise a cabal against him. There is one already formed by the French and the Prussian parties, supported by the Hol- steiners who have been attracted to Russia by the fortune of Peter- Ulric. Lestocq directs, or seems to direct, the affair; putting forward, in opposition to Bestoujef, Count Michael Voront- sof, who has taken part in the accession of Elizabeth. We need not here paint the portrait of the minister whom Jeanne-Elizabeth would thus put in check, one of the most astonishing diplomatic free-lances of the age, for he has served many before finally offering his services to Russia. Does Figchen’s mother really represent to herself the gravity of the struggle into which she is entering, and the power of the adversary whom she has against her ? 1 1 is not probable. But she remembers that Frederick has promised her the Abbey of Quedlinbourg for her younger sister, if she succeeds in her enterprise, and she means to have her abbey. In Frederick’s mind the fall of Bestoujef serves as the signal of a great political upheaval, which may lead to the closer union of Russia, Prussia, and Sweden. How glorious for the Princess of Zerbst, to link her name with the accomplishment of such a task ! She feels within herself the power to achieve it. She is a woman, and she comes from Zerbst : let that be her excuse. She imagines herself still in the midst of the little intrigues, the frail plots, that she has known before ; and it is this ^hat constitutes her great mistake, till one day her eyes open to the reality of things, and she sees the immensity of the abyss ear which she has unknowingly ventured. As 32 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA for the marriage of her daughter, she w^ll have no more to do with it. ‘ It is a settled thing,’ she writes to her husband. Figchen has won the suffrage of all ; ‘ cherished by the sovereign, loved by the heir apparent.’ And what has the heart of the future wife to say to all this ? Has the recollection of that first meeting at Eutin with the sickly ‘ child of Kiel ’ given place to more favourable impressions ? That is not a point that enters into the calculations of her mother. Peter is Grand Duke ; one day he , will be Emperor. TTie heart of her daughter would be made of different stuff from the hearts of all German Princesses, past and present, if she were not satisfied with her chances of happiness under such conditions. Let us see nevertheless what has happened to the sickly child since the un- expected change in his fate. IV Peter was born at Kiel, February 21, 1728. The minister at Holstein, Bassewitz, wrote to St. Petersburg that the Czarevna Anna Petrovna had given birth to ‘ a robust and healthy boy.’ It was a phrase of court flattery. The child was not robust, and never could be. His mother died three months later ; of consumption, said the doctors. The feeble health of the future Emperor caused his education to be neglected. Up to the age of seven he is in the hands of governesses, French governesses, at Kiel as at Stettin. He has also a French master. Millet. At this point he is suddenly put under the discipline of the officers of the Holstein Guard. He becomes a ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 33 s oldier b efore he is a man, a soldier of the bmrack^ of the mess, of the guard-room, of the field-parade. So he acquires a taste for the low side of soldiering, its vulgarities, its hardships, its minutiae. He goes through his drill, he mounts guard. In 1737, at the age of nine, he is sergeant, and he stands, musket in hand, at the door of a room in which his father is giving a sumptuous dinner to the officers. Tears run down the child’s cheeks as he sees the suc- culent dishes file past under his eyes. At the second course his father has him relieved, ap- points him lieutenant, and allows him to sit down to the table. After he had come to the throne, Peter was wont to refer to this incident as the happiest recollection of his life. In 1739. on the death of his father, there is a complete change of regulation. He has a head tutor, under whom are several others. This head tutor is the Holsteiner Brummer, whom we know already. Rulhiere has eulogised this man ‘ of rare merit,’ whose sole error, according to him, was that of ‘ bringing up the young Prince after the greatest models, considering rather his station than his abilities.’ 'Other testimonies that have come to us in regard to this personage are much less favourable. The Frenchman Millet said of him that ‘he was good for training horses, and not.,.:princes.’ He treated his* pupil, it seems, bml^ly- inflicting on him preposterous punish- ment^ utterly unsuited to the delicacy of his healt^, such as depriving him of food, or inflict- ing (Ml him the torture of kneeling for a long space of time on dried peas spread on the ground. At the same time, as the little Ptince, ‘le dia- 34 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA biotin,’ who persisted in living despite the objec- tion of the Empress Anne — was at once heir to the throne of Russia and to that of Sweden, he was taught alternately Russian and Swedish, according to the chances of the moment. The result was that he knew neither language. When he came to St. Petersburg in 1742, Elizabeth was astonished to find him so backward. She handed him over to Stahlin, a Saxon, who had come to Russia in 1735, and who was Professor of Eloquence, of Poetry, and of the Philosophy of Gottschedt, of the Logic of Wolff, and of many other things besides. To his functions as pro- fessor he joined the exercise of a great number of talents. He wrote offi^yal verse for the Court fHes, translated Italian operas for her Majesty’s theatre, designed medals destined to record some victory over the Tartars, directed the choir of the imperial chapel, and composed mottoes for the court fireworks. What became of Peter’s education in the midst of all this may be easily imagined. Briimmer still remained with the child in his position of master of the household — grosser and more brutal than ever, according to Stahlin’s report. One day the latter was obliged to interfere in order to hinder actual violence ; the Holsteiner was making for the young Prince with raised fists, while Peter, half-dead with fright, shouted to the guard to come to his aid, U nder such training the character of Catherine’s future husband contracted vicious habits and in- eradicable defects ; he was at once violent and cunning, cowardly and braggart. He already astonished the candid Figchen by his lies, as ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 35 Aie was afterwards to astonish the world by his cowardice. One day, as he amused himself by thrilling her with records of his prowess against the Danes, she inquired naively at what time these exploits had happened. ‘ Three or four years before my father’s death.’ ‘ But you would only be seven!’ He reddened with anger. Weakly withal, uncomely in body as in mind, he was a crooked soul in an impoverished and prematurely ravaged body. Figchen would certainly do ill to count on his affection, sincere as it appeared in the eyes of Jeanne-Elizabeth, to assure her establishment in Russia. Was he even capable of love, this young man who cut so sorry a figure ? Happily for her, Catherine was well able to depend on her own re.sources. The account she herself gives of this period of her life would be scarcely credible if we had not wherewith to verify the accuracy of her story. She was hardly fifteen, and already we find in her that just and penetrating perception, that soundness of judg- ment, that marvellous sense of the situation, and that admirable good sense which, later on, formed so large a part of her genius, — which were, per- haps, her genius. To begin with, she realises that to remain in Russia, to make a figure, to play a ro/e, it is needful to become a Russian. ^ Without doubt her cousin Peter had never thought of it. But she sees well the discomfort and the dislike that he creates about him with his Holstein jargon and his German manners. She gets up in the night to repeat the lessons that her Russian master, Adadourof, has set her. As she never takes the precaution of dressing, and 36 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA walks barefoot in the room to keep herself awake, she takes a chill. Soon her life is in danger. ‘ The young Princess of Zerbst,’ writes La Chetardie (March 26, 1744), ‘is ill with peri- pneumohia.’ The Saxon party takes courage — uselessly, if we may believe the French diplo- matist, for Elizabeth is resolved, whatever happens, that they shall never profit from the event. ‘ “ They shall gain nothing,” she said the day before yesterday to MM. de Briimmer and Lestocq ; “ for if I have the misfortune to lose this dear child, may the devil take me if ever I have a Saxon princess.” ’ Brummer also confided to La Chetardie that, ‘ in the distressing extremity that must be faced and considered, he had laid his plans, and that a Princess of Armstadt \sic], a charming person, who had been thought of by the King of Prussia in case the Princess of Zerbst were to fail, would have the preference over every other.’ The prospect of this substitution, reassur- ing as it is, is far from delighting La Chetardie. ‘We shall lose much,’ he declares, ‘seeing how I am looked upon by the Princesses of Zerbst, mother and daughter, and their persuasion that I have contributed to the future prepared for them.’ While rival ambitions thus fight over her, the Princess Sophia struggles with death. The doctors prescribe blood-letting. Her mother opposes it. It is referred to the Empress; but the Empress is at the convent of La Troitza, absorbed in the devotions to which she abandons herself in her passionate, though intermittent way, putting a certain passion into all that she does. Five days pass; the patient waits. At ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA—MARRIAGE 37 last Elizabeth arrives with Lestocq, and orders the blood-letting. The poor Figchen loses con- sciousness. When she returns to herself, she finds herself in the arms of the Empress, who, to console her for the prick of the lancet, makes her a present of a diamond necklace and a pair of earrings worth 20,000 roubles. It is the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth who notes the price. Peter himself becomes generous, and gallantlj’ offers a watch covered with diamonds and rubies. But diamonds and rubies have no power over the fever. In twenty-seven days she is bled sixteen times, sometimes four times in twenty-four hours. At length the youth and robust constitution of Figchen get the better alike of the disease and the treatment. It appears, even, that this long and severe crisis has had a decisive and singularly happy influence over her destiny. While her mother has succeeded in rendering herself insup- portable to everybody, always in opposition to the doctors, in dispute with the attendants, scold- ing and tormenting her own daughter, she, on the other hand, has known how to win all hearts, and, despite her condition, to render herself liked and loved by all. There is a story of a certain piece of stuff — the famous blue stuff embroidered with silver, the present of her uncle Louis — that Jeanne-Elizabeth took it into her head, one knows not why, to try to take away from the poor Figchen. It is easy to imagine the excitement caused in the sick-chamber by this pitiful incident ; a concert of reprobation against the unnatural mother, a concert of sym- pathy in favour of the daughter, victim of such unfeeling treatment. Figchen gave up the piece 38 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA of Stuff, and lost nothing by it. And she had other triumphs. Her very illness endeared her to the Russian heart, for it was known how she had come it. The image of the young girl, barefooted, heedless of the winter weather, con- ning over by night the unfamiliar sounds of the -Sclavonic tongue, already haunted the imagina- tion, was already a legend. And it was said that, at the most dangerous point of the crisis, her mother had wished to summon a Protestant pastor to her bedside. ‘No,’ was her reply; ‘what for.^ ’ Send for Simon Todorski.’ Simon Todorski was the orthodox priest who had had charge of the religious education of the Grand Duke, and who was now to undertake that also of the Grand Duchess. What were the sentiments, at this time, of the Princess Sophia on this delicate subject } It is difficult to be sure. Certain indications favour the supposition that the treatise of Heinec- cius and the objurgations of the Pro Memoria of Christian-August had produced on her a some- what profound impression. ‘ I pray God,’ she wrote to her father, still at Konigsberg, ‘ to strengthen my soul with all the force it will need in order to resist the temptations to which I prepare to see myself exposed. He will accord this grace to the prayer of your Highness and of dear mamma.’ Mardefeldt, for his part, showed some anxiety. ‘There is one point,’ he writes, ‘ that causes me infinite embarrassment : it is that the mother believes, or pretends to believe, that this young beauty could never embrace the Greek religion.’ He tells how he had one day to have recourse to the pastor, in order to calm V ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 39 the mind of the Princess, frightened by the lessons of the Pope. Here, nevertheless, is what Catherine thought later, no doubt looking back on her own experience, of the difficulties that line the way to the bosom of the orthodox church on the part of a German Princess brought up in the Lutheran religion, of the time required for surmounting them, and of the course and progress of the moral problem. Writing to Grimm on August 18, 1776, in reference to the Princess of Wurtemberg, whom she destines for her son Paul, she expresses herself in these terms : ‘As soon as we have her, we will set about her conversion. We shall need quite fifteen days. . . . To hasten it all on, Pastoukhof has gone to Memel to teach her the ABC and the Confession in Russian : conviction will come after.' However it may have been, the refusal to see the evangelical minister — a repudiation of the faith of her childhood — coming from the dying lips of the future Grand Duchess, and the appeal for the aid of Todorski — an anticipatory confession of the orthodox faith — received a ready belief. From that time the position of Figchen in Russia was assured. Whatever might come about, she was sure for the future to find it in the hearts of this naif and profoundly re- ligious people, whose beliefs she had espoused, and who testified its gratitude by immediately espousing her interests. The link that was to unite this little German Princess to the great Sclavonic nation, whose language she was but beginning to stammer ; the compact that for near a half-century was to associate their destinies in a single glorious fortune, to be broken only 40 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSL by death ; this link, this compact, were from this moment found and formed. On April 20, i74^_-tlie Princess Sophia appears for the first" time in public after her illness. She is still so pale that the Empress sends her a pot of rouge. But, notwithstanding, she attracts all eyes, and she feels that all eyes look on her kindly. Already she pleases and attracts. She brightens and warms about her the glacial atmosphere of a court which she is one day to render so brilliant. Peter himself shows himself more attentive and more con- fiding. Alas ! his gallantry and his confidence are of but one kind. He tells his future wife the story of his intrigue with one of the maids of honour of the Empress, the Princess Lapou- khine, whose mother has recently been exiled to Siberia. The freiline has to quit the court at the same time. Peter would like to have married her, but resigned himself to the will of the Empress. Figchen blushes, and thanks the Grand Duke for the honour he has done her in making her the third party to his secrets. Already it is evident what sort of \ future lay before these two creatures so little made for one another. During this time the Princess Jeanne-Eliza- beth is quite given over to her enterprises in the higher diplomacy. She makes friends with the Troubetzkoi family, and with the bastard j Betzky himself, whose bustling personality I begins to make itself felt. She has a salon, j 41 JN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE which is the meeting-place of all the adversaries of the actual political system, all the enemies of Bestoujef : Lestocq, La Chetardie, Mardefeldt, Brumnier. She forms cabals, she plots, she intrigues. She goes forward with all the ardour of an hysterical woman, and all the heedlessness of an airy brain. She thinks she has secured her success, and also her Abbey of Quedlin- bourg. She already sees herself complimented by Frederick, and assuming, in short, the role of his ambassador at the court of the North, his best, his most precious ally. She sees nothing of the abyss at her feet. On the 1st of June 1744 Elizabeth has betaken herself once more to the convent of La Troitza, this time with full ceremony and the pomp of a solemn pilgrimage, taking half her court with her, and journeying on foot. She has formed the vow, on coming to i:ie throne, that she will repeat this ceremony every time that she visits Moscow, in memory of the refuge that Peter 1 . had found in the ancient monastery, at a time when his life was in danger through the revolt of the Strelitz. The Princess Sophia, still too weak, is not able to accompany the Empress, and her mother remains with her. But after three days a courier arrives, bearing a letter from Elizabeth: the two Princesses are to rejoin the Imperial cortege, and assist at its solemn entrance within the walls of La Troitza. Scarcely are they installed in a cell, where the Grand Duke comes to pay them a visit, when the Empress herself enters, followed by Lestocq. She seems greatly agitated. She orders the Princess 42 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Jeanne-Elizabeth to follow her into a neigh- bouring room. Lestocq accompanies them. The interview is long. Figchen pays no heed to it, occupied in listening to her cousin’s usual extravagant chatter. Little by little her youth and vivacity get the better of the constraint which the Grand Duke’s presence generally in- spires, she enters into his childish mood, and both fall to laughing and playing with great gaiety. Suddenly Lestocq returns : ‘ This is soon to be put a stop to,’ says he brusquely ; then, addressing the Princess Sophia: ‘You had better see about packing up.’ Figchen remains dumfounded, and, as the Grand Duke demands what it all means, Lestocq contents himself with adding: ‘ You will soon see.’ ‘ I saw clearly,’ writes Catherine in her memoirs, ‘ that he (the Grand Duke) would have abandoned me without regret. For my part, his disposition being what it was, I should have viewed his loss with indifference, but not that of the crown of Russia.’ Was it possible that this girl of fifteen was already thinking about the crown? Why not? Writing her memoirs forty years afterwards, supposing that she really wrote them as they have come to us, Catherine may, and indeed must, have forced the note of her childish impressions. ‘ My heart,’ she tells us, referring to this period, ‘ foresaw nothing good in the future ; ambition alone sustained me. I had, deep down in my heart, an indefinable something which never let me doubt for an instant that I should become the Empress of Russia.’ Here the exaggeration is evident, and the a posteriori ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 43 attitude stares one in the face. But the throne in company with Peter might well allure the imagination of the precocious child ; ‘ expecta- tions ’ far more distant have at all times figured in the matrimonial bill, and fiancees of fifteen, naw as ever, know very well how to cash them. '^After Lestocq comes the Empress, very red, and the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth, very agitated, her eyes full of tears. At the sight of the sovereign the two youngsters, who had been sitting on the ledge of the window, their legs dangling, and, taken aback by what Lestocq had just said, had not moved from their place, jump down precipitately. One sees the picture. It seems to disarrn the Empress’s wrath. She smiles, goes up to them, embraces them, and goes out without a word. Then the mystery begins to clear up. Eor more than a month the Princess ofsZerbst had been unconsciously walking over a -'mine that had been dug for her by the enerhfes whom she fancied it so easy to dispose of. j And the mine had just exploded. The Marquis La Chetardie had returned to Russia at the age of thirty-six, with the reputa- tion of being the most brilliant diplomatist of the day. Tall, well made, an imposing and accom- plished cavalier, he seemed destined to take a great place at a court where everything was decided by favour, where success depended on the power of pleasing, and where he, it was said, had already had the good fortune to please. He had his plan, a very ingenious, perhaps a too ingenious, plan, whose adoption he had already secured, not without difficulty, at the court of Versailles. It placed the fall of Bestoujef, that 44 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA is to say the abandonment of the Austrian policy defended by this minister, as the price of an ar- rangement long debated between the two courts, eagerly desired by Elizabeth, obstinately refused by France. It related to the title of Imperial Majesty, tacitly allowed to the Czars of Russia since Peter the Great, but not yet inscribed on the protocol, and consequently absent from the official documents emanating from the chancellor of the Most Christian King. La Chetardie had obtained credentials containing the longed-for title. He kept them by him, to give to the successor of Bestoujef, after his dismissal. Eliza- beth was well aware of it, and soon it was known to every qne at the court. Until matters were arranged, the French diplomatist, relying on his personal ascendency, affected to deal directly with the Empress, over the head of her chancellor. This was relying too much on his powers ; it showed, too, a singular error in regard to the character of Elizabeth. The portrait of the daughter of Peter I. has been often sketched, and w^e have been able to arrive at a probably exact idea of this singular sovereign’s ways of living and ruling. She was at once restless and indolent, avid of pleasure and nevertheless fond of affairs, spending hours over her toilette, keeping a signa- ture or an order waiting for weeks or months, and yet authoritative withal ; voluptuous, pious, incredulous, and superstitious ; passing, from moment to moment, from excesses which ruined her health to religious exaltation which impaired her intellect : une ndvrosde, as we should say to- day. The Baron de Breteuil relates, in one of his despatches, that, in 1 760, she was in the act I ) ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 45 of signing the renewal of the treaty concluded in 1 746 with the court of Vienna, and had already written ‘ Eli . . . ’ when a wasp settled on the end of her pen. She stopped, and it was six months before she made up her mind to finish the signature. Of her appearance, the Princess of Zerbst has left us this pleasant sketch : — ‘ The Empress Elizabeth is very tall ; she had formerly an extremely good figure. She was getting fat when I knew her, and it always seemed to me that what Saint Evremond says in his portrait of the famous Duchess de Mazarin, Hortense Mancini, might have been said of the Empress : “ De ce qu’elle a la taille deliee une autre I’aurait belle.” It was then true to the letter. Never was a head more perfect; it is true that the nose is less so than the other features, but it is well enough in its way. The mouth is unique : there never was such another : it is all graces, and smiles, and sweetness. It could never look sour, could never take any but a gracious shape ; reproaches from it would be adorable, if it could ever proffer reproaches. Two rows of pearls show through the coral of two lips that must be seen to be imagined. The eyes are full of sensibility ; yes, that is the effect they make upon me. One might take them for black, but they are really blue. They inspire all the sweetness with which they are animated. . . . Never was a forehead more pleasing. Her hair grows in such a manner that with a touch of the comb it seems to have been cunningly arranged. She has black eyebrows, and hair naturally cendr^iv Her whole form is noble, her bearing fine, her presence full of grace ; she speaks well, 46 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA with an agreeable voice ; her gestures are correct. In short there never was one like her. Her complexion, her neck, her hands — never were any such seen. Believe me, I know what I am talking about, and I am speaking without pre- possession.’ As for her mind, the pen of the Chevalier d’Eon opposes to this gracious ensemble a terrible counterpart : — ^ ‘Under an air of apparent bonhomie, .shy (Elizabeth) has a sharp and incisive intelhg^ffe. If one is not buttoned and cuirassed beforehand against inspection, her eye glides under your clothing, lays you bare, pierces open your breast, and when you discover it, it is too late : you are naked, the woman has read you to the root of your heart, has rummaged your very soul. . . . Her frankness and good nature are only a mask. In your France, for example, and in all Europe, she has the reputation and the name of cldment. On her accession to the throne, indeed, she swore on the venerated image of St. Nicholas that no one should be put to death during her reign. She has kept her word to the letter, and not a head has as yet been cut off, it is true ; but two thousand tongues, two thousand pairs of ears ; have been. ... You know, no doubt, the story : of that poor, interesting Eudoxie Lapoukhine 1 She did some wrong perhaps to her Majesty, but the gravest wrong ? sure, was to have been her rival, and fairer than she. Elizabeth had her tongue pierced with a red-hot iron and twenty j strokes of the knout administered by the hand of the hangman, and the unhappy creatcre was pregnant, and near the birth. ... You will find in ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 47 her private life the same contradictions. Now impious, now fervent, sceptical to the point of atheism, bigoted to the point of superstition, she passes whole hours on her knees before the image of the Virgin, talking with her, interrogat- ing her with ardour, and demanding of her in what company of the Guards she should take the lover of the moment. ... I was forgetting one thing. Her Majesty has a pronounced taste for strong liquor. It happens to her sometimes to be in- disposed to the extent of falling in a swoon. . . . Then her dress and her corsets have to be cut. She beats her servants and her women.’ It is easy to see what difficulties must have been found by La Chetardie in his relations with a princess of so strange a humour, and on what slippery ground the Princess of Zerbst was ven- turing in his company. For she had become his associate, and had ended by pinning all her faith to him. Mardefeldt was quite out of the battle, Briimmer had little by little drawn away from the party, and Lestocq tacked about, with the native suspiciousness of his shrewd instinct. Despatches from Versailles exhorted the Marquis to pru- dence, ending by peremptorily ordering h-im not to make too uncertain a bargain on the strength of the expected gratitude for the Imperial title. After all, the matter was not of such grave im- portance, ‘the King is Emperor in France.’ It was much better to pay f ' , Czarina ‘ a kind of flattery,’ by showing her uie king’s letter. This would, perhaps, induce her to force the minister’s hand in favour of the conclusion of the wished- for alliance. La Chetardie declared himself ready to obey, but there was some difficulty in +8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA doing so : it was needful to ‘ catch and keep ’ the Czarina, for at least a quarter of an hour, and this he could not do. Meanwhile, Bestoujef put himself on the de- fensive. With the assistance of an employ^ of the chancellor’s, Goldbach, a German, perhaps a Jew, an expert in the art of deciphering, so much cultivated at that period, he intercepted and brought to light all the correspondence of the French ambassador, which he suddenly planted before the eyes of the Empress, bringing specially to her notice the passages which per- sonally concerned her, the passages in which La Chetardie deplored the idleness and frivolity of the sovereign, her unrestrained love of pleasure, and her very coquetry, which caused her to change her toilette four or five times a day. One can imagine Elizabeth’s anger, and the conse- quences. Having deliberately refrained from making use of his credentials. La Chetardie was without official standing. A simple note from the chancellor’s office gave him orders to quit' Moscow and Russia within twenty-four hours. The Empress even demanded the return of a portrait that she had given him on the cover of a snuff-box set with diamonds. The snuff-box he could keep. But it was not La Chetardie only who was compromised His despatches had revealed to the Empress the part taken by the Princess of Zerbst in the abortive intrigue. They showed her at the court and in her own intimacy play- ing the part of spy in the service of Prussia and France, giving secret information to La Chetardie and Mardefeldt, corresponding secretly with ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 49 Frederick. That is what was meant by the enig- matical scene at the convent of La T roitza. The Princess of Zerbst escaped with a good fright, with a taste of the truth that she had to hear from the lips of Elizabeth, and with the irre- vocable loss, not only of the credit she had fondly hoped to acquire at court, whose secret springs she only now began to realise, but also of that to which she might legitimately have laid claim. ‘The name of the Princess of Zerbst,’ wrote La Chetardie’s successor, d’ Albion, a year after these events, ‘ was frequently met with in the inter- cepted letters of M. de La Chetardie. From that time the Empress took a decided dislike to her. . . . Her best course would be to return to Germany.’ This, indeed, is what she did, but not without having assisted at the single victory of which a chance remained to her under a sky now so overcast, — the single one of which she seemed to have lost sight, almost to the point of letting it escape her. ^ VI ' The person of Figchen had passed through this crisis unhurt. From this moment, indeed, and as if her proved innocence had pleaded her cause with even her adversaries and the enemies of her fortune, her triumph became.^certain, and her marriage with the Grand jJuke finally assured. One delicate point still remained to be settled, the solemn admission of the Princess Sophia into the Greek Church. The Princess of Zerbst had done her best to carry out the injunc- tions of her husband. She had tried to fortify 50 CA THERINE II. OE RUSSIA her own faith and the faith of her daughter. She had also made inquiry if the precedent of the wife of the Czarevitch Alexis, who had retained her position in the Protestant Church, might not be utilised for the benefit of Figchen. On this last point the result of her investigation was unsatisfactory. But the news that she gave of it to the pious and scrupulous Christian- August was accompanied by reassuring statements. She had gone over the creed of the Greek Church with Simon Todorski, she had compared it care- fully with Luther’s catechism, and she had arrived at the conviction that there was no funda- mental difference between the two religions. As for Figchen, she had not taken so long to find out that she could save her soul in the orthodox religion. Heineccius evidently did not know what he was talking about, and Methodius har- monised admirably with Luther. The arguments of Simon Todorski on this subject were irresist- ible. He was a clever man, this archimandrite. He had seen the world, and had been a student at the University of Halle. Christian- August was not at first easy to move. ‘ My good Prince of Zerbst,’ wrote Frederick, later on, ‘was’most restive on this point. ... He replied to all my arguments, “My daughter shall not join the Greek Church.” ’ Happily there was another Simon Todorski at Berlin. ‘Some priest,’ con- tinues Frederick, ‘whom I knew how to win over . . . was complaisant enough to persuade him that the Greek rites were similar to those of the Lutherans. After that he was always saying “ Lutheran-Greek, Greek- Lutheran, it is the same thing.’” In the course of June, a courier, sent ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 51 by Elizabeth, returned with the Prince’s official authorisation of the marriage and conversion of the Princess Sophia. The good Christian- August declared that he had perceived the finger of God in the circumstances which had led to this determination. June 28th was fixed for the public profession of the young catechumen, and the day following, the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, for the betrothal. The approach of this ceremony . did not fail to cause some emotion to Figchen. The letters that she received in great numbers from her relations in Germany were not all of a reassuring kind. One can see to what comment of all kinds this unexpected destiny of the little princess would give rise in the minds of those among whom she had lived till now. The tendency was not generally too favourable. A little jealousy mingled perhaps with the apprehensions that seemed inspired only by a tender solicitude. The lamentable history was recalled of that un- happy Charlotte of Brunswick, the wife of Alexis, deserted by her husband, forgotten by the Czar. And had not the far-off Russia been fatal to all that German family, which had thought to find there a future of glory and greatness } All that came to the future Grand Duchess in long con- torted phrases of Teutonic jargon, stuffed with French, in which she saw more of envy than of true consideration, but which made her some- times tremble as she gazed anxiously into the future. No one certainly would have thought so among the crowd of courtiers who, at ten o’clock in the morning of the 28th June 1744, thronged the Vi university Of 52 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA entrance to the imperial chapel of the Golovinski Dvarets. Dressed in an ‘ Adrienne ’ robe of red cloth of Tours laced with silver, a simple white ribbon about her unpowdered hair, Fig- chen was radiant with youth, beauty, and modest assurance. Her voice did not tremble, her memory did not hesitate an instant, as she pronounced in Russian the creed of her new faith before the moved assembly. The Arch- bishop of Novgorod, he who had formerly declared himself against the marriage, shed pious tears on receiving her profession of faith, and all the assistants felt bound to imitate him. They had wept the same, it is true, at the conversion of Peter- Ulric, who had made grimaces during the ceremony, and had amused himself at the expense of the officiant. This sensibility was a part of the ceremony. The sovereign testified her contentment by present- ing the catechumen with a clasp and collar of diamonds, which the expert Jeanne- Elizabeth estimated at 100,000 roubles. But what would the good Christian-August have said if he had heard his daughter declare before God and man : ‘ I believe and I confess that faith alone doth not suffice for my justifica- / tion?’ Did not Figchen herself need some effort to pronounce these words, which separated her finally from her past ? Those who would find here the influence of the Parisian philosophers on her youthful mind have somewhat confused their dates. It is extremely probable that at this moment the future friend of Voltaire did not know of that writer’s existence. On leaving the chapel she found herself at the end of her ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 53 Strength, and she could not appear at dinner. But it was no more either Figchen or the Princess Sophia-Frederika who had crossed with unsteady feet the threshold of this temple of golden icones. That day, in the official liturgy, a prayer was introduced for the ‘ Orthodox {Olagovierna) ^Catherine Aleksieievna.’ The Princess of Zerbst explained to her husband, it is true, that Catherine had simply been added to Sophia, ‘ as occurs at confirmation.’ As for Aleksieievna, that sur- name, according to the usage of the country, stood for ‘daughter of Augustus,’ Augustus having no nearer translation in Russian. The good Christian asked no questions. He had had for some time to lay in a provision of credulity, and there were special graces, no doubt, for the benefit of German princes with marriageable daughters abroad. The betrothal took place next day in the Ou- spienski Sobor. The Princess of Zerbst herself placed the rings upon the fingers of Catherine Aleksieievna and her future husband — two little marvels, these rings, worth quite 50,000 ecus, said she. Some writers, Rulhiere among others, affirm that Catherine received on this occasion the title of heir to the throne, with right of succession in case of the Grand Duke’s death. The fact is contested by the most recent Russian authorities. It would have required an official manifesto, and there is no trace of this. The future Grand Duchess continued to win all hearts by the per- fect grace and seemliness of her attitude. Her mother herself observed with satisfaction that she blushed every time that the exigencies of her newly acquired rank obliged her to take pre- 54 CA7HERINE II. OF RUSSIA cedence over her who had given her birth. ■ She had soon to find out that her daughter, notwith- standing, seized the opportunity afforded by her new position to escape from a tutelage that had long weighed upon her. Nor was she alone in finding herself now out of place and unwelcome in the position in which she was obliged to live, riie Princess of Zerbst was treated in general as a ‘stranger,’ and she aroused no sympathy. Catherine, for the first time in her life, had now money of her own — 30,000 roubles — which had been sent to her by Elizabeth, '■pour son jeu^ as the phrase was at the Court of Russia — an amount which seemed to her an inexhaustible treasure. She soon drew upon it largely, and, at first, very commendably. Her brother had just been sent to Hamburg to finish his studies. She declared that she would pay the cost of his maintenance. She had her own court, of whom the principal functionaries, chamberlains and gentlemen of the bedchamber, were carefully chosen outside of the coterie that the Princess of Zerbst professed to keep in her interests and in those of Fr 'derick. The son of the chancellor himself, Peter Bestoujef, was one of the number. This was one disappointment the more for the Princess of Zerbst, and she did not fail to give one more instance of her want of tact by showing it. Her bad temper, bursting forth on any occasion and at the expense of every one, put the finishing touch to her unpopularity. There were violent scenes between her and the Grand Duke, which afforded the latter an opportunity for showing off his guard-room manners and language at the expense of his mother-in-law. . - iL IN R USSIA—MARRIA GE 5 5 Catherine, nevertheless, rapidly took root in her new situation. She even seized the occasion to become more intimately acquainted with the vast domain that she would one day be called to govern. She made, in the company of the Grand Duke and of her mother, the journey to Kief which, forty years after, she was to make over again with such pomp and splendour, and the im- pression of this journey was destined never to be effaced from her memory, but to have a visible influence on her mind and even on the char- acter of her future government. Journeying five hundred miles without ever leaving the domains of Elizabeth, without ever seeing anything but crowds prostrate before the omnipotence of the Czarina, the little German Prince.ss, ac- customed to the narrow horizons of the puny sovereignties of her country, felt the rise and de- velopment in her of an idea of grandeur and force absolutely without limits. It was this idea that, become Empress, she felt to be incarnated in her, and destined to subdue the world. At the same time, with her young, clear-eyed sagacity, her already just perception of things, .'■he perceived the seamy side of all this pomp and splendour, this magnificent empire one day to be hers. At St. Petersburg, at Moscow, she had till now had before her eyes only the throne glittering with gold, the diamond-starred court, the outer drapings of the imperial majesty, lined with a somewhat barbarous showiness and a half-Asiatic luxuriousness, but so much the more imposing. She now found herself face to face with the roots and sources of this unparalleled splendour : she saw the Russian people as they were, she saw 56 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA them with astonishment, with affright. They were sordid and savage, half-clothed, shivering with cold and hunger in their smoky hovels, and bearing like a cross the double yoke of misery and servitude. The lamentable vices of the social and political organisation, frightful abuses of power, forced themselves upon her. And all those attempts Tit reform, all those generous instincts, all the liberal ideas that were to mark the first part of her reign, had their origin in this first rapid vision of things. On her return to Moscow she had also to make experience of another side of the picture : the little annoyances inseparable from so elevated a rank. One evening at the theatre, in the Grand Duke’s box, opposite to that of the Empress, she observed the angry looks of the Empress turned in her direction. Presently the obsequious Les- tocq, with whom the sovereign had just been conferring, presented himself before her, and drily, almost brutally, with the visible intention of making the rigidity of his attitude felt, explained to her the reason of the Czarina’s anger. Cathe- rine had got into debt — 17,000 roubles, besides the 75,000 francs that she had spent in a few months. Her treasure had slipped between her fingers, one day to shed a shower of gold through the empire, through all Europe. But what was she to do ? Was she to content herself with the three dresses that she had brought to Russia } She had had, at first, to borrow the very bedclothes of her mother. She could not decently continue in such a fashion. Then, too, she had soon found out that in this court, as much and more than in that of Zerbst, presents ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 57 make friends, and that a person in her position had no other means of paying for so indispens- able an outlay. The Grand Duke himself had a marked predilection for this means of forwarding the good terms on which he hoped to keep with his fiancee. Finally, the Countess Roumiantsof had her own way of reading the responsibilities of her position as lady in waiting— a responsibility which seemed to her to lie in the direction of perquisites. In her memoirs, from which we take these details, Catherine is very severe upon those who were at this time in attendance on her, nor does she spare the Grand Duke himself, with whom, in spite of his generosity, her relations, up to the present, had not been specially cordial. Perhaps she gave way to the temptation of blackening this corner of the picture. A letter in her writing, which dates from this period, seems to justify the supposition. The Grand Duke had been attacked by a pleurisy, in the month of October, and was obliged, despite his impatience, to keep his room. Th.'s is what Catherine writes to him (we respect the style and orthography of the document) : — ' Monsiegneur, ayant consulte ma Mere, sach- ant qu’elle peut beaucoup sur le grand-marechal (Briimmer), elle m’a permis de lui en parler et de faire qu’on vous permettent de jouer sur les instrumens. Elle m’a aussy chargde de vous demander. Monseigneur, sy vous voulez quelques Italiens aujourd’hui apres Midy. Je vous assure que je deviendray folle en Votre place sy on m’otois tous. Je vous prie au Nom de Dieu, ne - — lui montrez pas ses billets. ^ 5 Catherine.’ 58 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA This may do something to rehabilitate the Princess of Zerbst herself from the accusations of crabbed and cross-grained temper that her daughter was fond of bringing against her memory. Two months later, in December, we find Catherine imploring, with tears and prayers, that she may be allowed to see her betrothed, who, having recovered from the pleurisy, has just been attacked by another and more dangerous disease. On his way from Moscow to St. Peters- burg, at Hotilof, Peter was brought to a stop : smallpox had manifested itself. It was of this disease that the betrothed of Elizabeth had died. The Czarina promptly sent Catherine and her mother out of the way to St. Petersburg, and took up her place by the bedside of her son. Catherine wrote the tenderest letters to her be- trothed, letters in which, for the first time, she used the Russian language. The letters, it is true, were really written by her Russian master, Adadourof, whose writing she copied. This second stay at St. Petersburg was marked for Catherine by the arrival of Count Gyllemborg, an envoy from Sweden, who brought news of the marriage of the heir to the throne, Adolph- Frederick, Catherine’s uncle, with the Princess Ulrica of Prussia. Catherine had already met the Swede at Hamburg, in 1740. He had then recognised in her ‘ a philosophical mind.’ He now wanted to know how the philosophy was getting on, and urged her to read Plutarch, the life of Cicero, and the Causes de la GroMdeur et de la Decadence des Romains. In return, Catherine offered to the grave philosopher her portrait, ‘ the portrait of a philosopher of fifteen,’ composed ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE sq by her in his honour, according to the custom of the age. The original of this composition, which she laid claim to later on, was unluckily burnt by her, and no copy is to be found in the papers of Count Gyllemborg, which are preserved in the university of Upsal. In her memoirs Cathe- rine states that, on seeing this juvenile work in 1758, she was astonished at the truth and depth of the characteristics she had there noted. It is to be regretted that she has iik)t given us the chance of verifying this appreciation. Peter was not able to set out for St. Peters- burg till the end of January. Castera relates that Catherine, having embraced her betrothed with every sign of the greatest delight, fainted away as soon as she had reached her room, and did not recover consciousness for three hours. The smallpox had not improved the appearance of the Grand Duke. The marks on his face, and an enormous wig in which he was muffled to hide other ravages, rendered him almost unrecog- nisable. The Princess of Zerbst was alone in finding him better looking than ever — as she reported to her husband. Castera no doubt exaggerated in his story, as he was accustomed to do, and the Princess remembered that letters sent through the post at St. Petersburg were copied without extra charge. However that may have been, the preparations for the marriage commenced soon after this auspicious, or in- auspicious, return. VII Such a ceremony had never yet been seen in Russia. The marriage of the Czarevitch Alexis, 6o CAl HERINE II. OF R US SI A son of Peter I., had taken place at Targau, in Saxony, and, before his time, the heirs to the throne of Moscbw were not future Emperors. Inquiries were made in France, where the mar- riage of the Dauphin had just been celebrated, and also at the court of Saxony. From Versailles and from Dresden arrived abundant memoranda, minute descriptions, drawings even, giving the minutest details jof the pomps to be imitated, to be surpassed. As soon as the ice was broken up on the Neva, English and German vessels fol- lowed one another with equipages, furniture, draperies, liveries;, ordered from every corner of Europe. Christian-August sent a present of Zerbst goods, heavy pieces of silk broidered with gold and silver, much thought of at that time. P'lowered silks were in fashion then, gold or silver on a clear ground. England was specially noted for them, and Zerbst came next in order, in the opinion of connoisseurs. \f After many alterations, the date of the cere- mony was at last fixed for the 2 rst Aup-ust.. The festivities were to last till the 30th. The Grand Duke’s physicians would have wished for a longer postponement. In March Peter had again had to take to his bed. A year seemed scarcely long enough to set him on his feet again entirely. But Elizabeth would not wait. It has been suggested that she was in a hurry to get rid of Catherine’s mother. Probably she had more serious reasons for showing impatience. Peter was in such uncertain health, that the succession to the throne was anything but assured, and the remembrance of the young Ivan, shut up in his prison, still haunted her. In June 1745 an un- ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 6i known man had been found, poniard in hand, in Elizabeth’s bedroom. He had been put to the torture, but had preserved silence. It ap- pears, nevertheless, ou the best authority, that Jeanne- Elizabeth continued to make herself very disagreeable. There was no dirty business in which she is not implicated during the last weeks of her residence in Russia. She plots and plans and intrigues without cease. She even goes so Tar as to accuse her daughter, declaring that she is having nocturnal rendezvous with her be- trothed. The Empress intercepts her corre- spondence and carefully examines it. She does not invite her husband to the ceremony which is about to take place. The Princess of Zerbst has long held out the hope of this invitation to her husband, telling him to hold himself ready, putting him off from day to day and from month to month. Frederick himself, misled by Mardefeldt, has raised similar expectations in the mind of his field - marshal. At length Jeanne- Elizabeth has to confess that there is more chance of her being herself sent away before the ceremony. The Princess’s brother was the only one of the family to be present ; thanks to the treachery, it is said, of Bestoujef. Homely, uncouth, poor- spirited August of Holstein was not a nice relative to produce in public. The English ambassador Hindford declares in his despatches that he never saw so fine a procession as that which conducted Catherine to the church of Our Lady of Kasan. The religious ceremony began at ten o’clock in the morning, and was not over till four o’clock in the afternoon. The orthodox 62 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA church does things conscientiously. During the following days there was a constant succession of files. Balls, masquerades, state dinners and suppers, the Italian opera, the French plays, illuminations, fireworks, nothing was wanting to the programme. The Princess of Zerbst ha^ left us a detailed description of the most interesting day, the day of the wedding : — The ball did not last beyond half-past one in the morning; after which Her Imperial Majesty, preceded by the masters of the ceremonies, the grand master of household, the grand marshal, and the grand chamberlain of the Grand Duke’s court, and followed only by the bride and bridegroom, holding one another’s hands, by me, by my brother, the Princess of Hesse, the mistress of the robes, the staats dames, the cammer frelen, and some frelen, directed her steps to the nuptia l chamber, which the men all quitted as soon as the ladies had entered, and the doors were closed, while the bridegroom entered the dressing-room. F irst the bride was undressed. Her Imperial Majesty took off the crown from her head ; I waived, in favour of the Princess of Hesse, the honour of putting on the chemise. The mistress of the robes put on the dressing-gown, and the rest of the ladies helped to adjust the most magnificen-t deshabille imaginable. ‘ Except this ceremony,’ observes the Princess of Zerbst, ‘ there is much less undressing of bride and bridegroom than there is with us. Not a man dares enter after the bridegroom has gone to undress for the night. The ‘‘ garlan d ” is not danced, and the garter is not handed round. ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA— MARRIAGE 63 ‘ As soon as the Grand Duchess was dressed, her Imperial Majesty went into the Grand Duke’s room, where the Master of the Hunt, Count Razonmovski, and my brother had aided him to undress. We followed the Princess in. He was dressed much like the bride, but he did not look near so well. Her Imperial Majesty then gave them her benediction, which they received kneeling. She embraced them tenderly, and left the Princess of Hesse, the Countess of Roumiantsof, and myself, to put them to bed. I tried to speak to her of the thanks and gratitude I owed her, but she only laughed at me.’ We owe to the pen of Jeanne-Elizabeth a description of the suite of rooms reserved for the bride and bridegroom : — ‘ It consists of four large rooms, one more beautiful than aaother. The principal room is the richest ; the hangings are of cloth of silver embroidered with silk, of the finest possible shading ; the furniture all matches : chairs, curtains, portures. The bedroom is in red velvet, almost scarlet. It is embroidered with columns and garlands in raised silver; the bed is in they^ middle. The furniture all matches. It is all so fine, so majestic, that you cannot see it without being transfixed with admiration.’ The series of fHes ended with a ceremony of a unique kind, never afterwards to be repeated. For the last time the Diedouchka (grandsire) of the Russian P'leet, a ship constructed by Peter the Great himself, according to the legend, was set afloat. By a ukase dated September 2, 1724, that monarch had ordered that the ship should be thus launched on the 30th August of every year, and 64 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA kept the rest of the time in the monastery of Alexander Nevski. After his death, ukase and ship were alike forgotten. It was only in 1724 that Elizabeth thought of it. She attempted the ceremony again the following year, on the occasion of her nephew’s marriage, and then it was done with for ever. A raft had to be made to support the ship, which could no longer hold water. Elizabeth went on board in great pomp, and kissed the portrait of her father, which was suspended to a mast. A month later, the Princess of Zerbst parted for ever from her daughter and from the court of Russia. In taking leave of the Empress, she threw herself at her feet, and asked pardon for all the trouble that she had caused her. Elizabeth drily replied that ‘ it was too late to speak about it, but that if the Princess ha The obscure origin of this romantic hero, whom an unhappy chance, a chance fatal to Poland, had thus brought into the history of his country, was well known; Williams, who before coming to Russia had for some years been minister at the Court of Saxony, had there met with Ponia- towski, the son of a parvenu, and the nephew of two of the most powerful Polish noblemen, the Czartoryskis. He interested himself in him, and offered to begin his political education by taking him to St. Petersburg. The Czartoryskis, on their side, were glad to seize the occasion of thus defending, at the Russian court, both their own interests, and, as they understood them, the in- terests of their country. They were just setting on foot in Poland a new political movement, one of compromise and of cordial understanding with the hereditary enemy, Russia, and of desertion of the traditional allies of the republic, France in particular. They turned their back on the West, and made head for the North, hoping to THE YOUNG COURT loi find a port of refuge for the unhappy vessel, shattered by the tempest, and leaking in every timber, of which they professed to be the pilots. This scheme was precisely in accord with that which Williams himself wished to further. The future King of Poland was then twenty- two. Pleasant to look at, he could not rival Sergius Saltykof in beauty, but he was an accomplished gentleman of the period ; with his varied acquirements, refined manners, cosmo- politan education, and superficial tincture of philosophy, he was an accomplished specimen of the kind, and the first that had come before the notice of Catherine. He personified to her that mental culture and worldly polish of which the writings of Voltaire and of Mme. de Sevigne had given her a notion and a taste. He had travelled, and at Paris he had belonged to that brilliant society w'hose charm and glitter had taken the admiration of all Europe, a very royalty, and less contested than every other. He was in some sort an emanation of it, and had both its merits and its defects. He could talk playfully on the most abstract questions, and touch lightly on the most risky subjects. He knew how to turn a love-letter gracefully, and to manipulate a commonplace into a madrigal. He had sensibility, and he knew the melting mood. He had a stock of romantic ideas, which could give him on occasion an adventurous and heroic air, hiding away, as under flowers, a cold dry nature, an imperturbable egoism, a very depth of cynicism. He united all the qualities likely to take her heart, even to a certain frivolity, always so attractive to her. 102 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA perhaps by a mysterious affinity with her own firm and stable nature. On his own account, Poniatowski had a further merit, strange enough, almost incredible, in a young man just come from Paris. ‘A severe education,’ he tells us in an autobiographical frag- ment which has reached us, ‘ had kept me out of all vulgar debauchery ; an ambition of winning and holding a place in what is called, especially at Paris, high life, had stood by me in my travels, and a concourse of singular little circumstances in the liaisons that I had barely entered upon in foreign countries, in my own, and in Russia, had seemed expressly to reserve me all in all for her who has disposed of all my destiny.’ Bestoujef, too, encouraged the young Pole, who, however, showed a certain distrust in the matter. He had heard gloomy tales of what had happened to young men who had pleased Empresses and Grand Duchesses of Russia, after they had ceased to please. Bestoujef had recourse to Lev ■^Narychkine, who generously consented to show the new favourite the road that he no doubt knew well. Narychkine was always the most accom- modating of men. But it was probably Catherine herself who bore down the last resistances. Her beauty alone, had there been no other attraction, would have sufficed. This is how the favoured lover afterwards described it : — ‘ She was five-and- twenty ; she had not long recovered from her first childbed ; she was at that perfect moment, which is generally, for women who have beauty, the most beautiful. With her black hair, she had a dazzling whiteness of skin, the colour [sic] of the eyeljds black and THE YOUNG COURT 103 very long, a Grecian nose, a mouth that seemed made for kisses, hands and arms perfect, a slim figure, rather tall than short, an extremely active bearing, and nevertheless full of nobility, the sound of her voice agreeable and her laugh as gay as her humour, which caused her to pass with facility from the most sportive, the most childish amusements, to the driest mathematical calculation.’ Gazing at her, ‘ he forgot,’ said he, ‘ that there was a Siberia.’ And soon those about the Grand Duchess were the spectators of a scene which went far to settle the floating conjectures. Count Horn, a Swede who was on a visit to St. Petersburg, and a friend of Poniatowski, was in the ‘set ’ of the Grand Duchess. One day, as he entered the room, a little Bolognese dog belonging to her began to bark furiously. It did the same to all the other visitors, until at last Poniatowski appeared, and the little traitor rushed up to him with an air of the greatest delight, and with all the tender demonstrations in the world. ‘ My friend,’ said the Swede, taking the new- comer aside, ‘there is nothing so terrible as a little Bolognese dog ; the first thing I have always done with the women I was in love with is to give them one, and I have always found out by their means if there was any one more favoured than I.’ Sergius Saltykof, on his return from Sweden, was not long in finding out that he had a suc- cessor. But he had no inclination to be jealous. If, later on, Catherine was not particularly con- stant to her lovers, it was certainly the lovers them- 104 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA selves who first set her the example. Even before Poniatowski was in favour, Saltykof carried his in- solence to the point of giving rendezvous which he did not keep. One night Catherine waited for him in vain till three o’clock in the morning. Williams had thus at his disposition, with regard to the Grand Duchess, a powerful in- fluence. He did not, how'ever, neglect other means. He had soon discovered the money difficulties in which Catherine was desperately entangled. In this matter the remonstrances of Elizabeth had been of no avail. Despite her love of order, and even certain bourgeois habits of economy, Catherine was all her life a spendthrift. Her taste for display carried all before it, and also her way of considering the utility of certain /outlays that the mercenary spirit of her native / country had implanted in her mind, and that the experience acquired in her new surroundings had only developed. Faith in the sovereign efficacy of the ‘ tip ’ was one of the beliefs to which she remained most faithful. Williams offered his services, which were gladly accepted. The total amount borrowed by Catherine from this source is unknown. It must have been considerable. Williams had carte blanche from his government. Two receipts, signed by the Grand Duchess, for a sum-total of 50,000 roubles, bear date July 21 and November ii, 1756, and the loan of July 2i was not the first, for, in asking for it, Catherine writes to Williams’s banker : ‘ I have some hesita- tion in coming to you again.' It only remained for the English ambassador to put to profit the influence thus acquired ; and the reconciliation that had come about between THE YOUNG COURT 105 the Grand Duchess and Bestoujef seemed of good augury. II Bestoujef had triumphed successively over all his enemies, but these victories, in which he had put forth all his strength, had exhausted him. He was growing old, and he felt less and less able to cope with the incessant attacks of rival ambitions, of old grudges, of old thirsts for revenge. Elizabeth herself did not forgive him for having, in some sort, imposed himself upon her. She began to treat him with coldness. She began also to suffer from attacks of apoplexy, and that gave the chancellor food for reflection. The Grand Duke, the Emperor of to-morrow, showed him the same discouraging aspect which had daunted Williams. Not that he imagined it would be very difficult to get into his favour ; it would be easy enough, but it would lead to nothing, or rather, it would lead only where Bestoujef absolutely would not go. If Peter had a political idea in his narrow brain, it was his admiration for Frederick. He was Prussian from head to foot. Bestoujef was, had been, and meant to die, a good Austrian. There was still the Grand Duchess. From the year 1754 the idea of a direct understanding with her seems to have been in the chancellor’s mind. The progress of this evolution was rapid. Catherine soon saw a considerable change, and one entirely to her advantage, in the organisation of the staff charged with the service and the surveillance of her person. Her head chamber- maid, la Vladislavova, a sort of feminine Cer- 8 io6 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA berus, became all at once as meek as a lambj after a confidential interview with the chancellor. Not long after, Bestoujef made his peace with the Princess of Zerbst, and offered himself, most unexpectedly, as intermediary in the correspond- ence which she continued to keep up with her daughter, and which he had himself done his best to put down. Finally, he ventured upon a heroic effort : by means of Poniatowski a docu- ment of capital importance was submitted to Catherine on the part of the chancellor. This time Bestoujef had burned his boats, and indeed risked his head ; but he opened out before the sad companion of Peter a new horizon, enough to dazzle her and to tempt her growing ambition ; he opened to her, in some sort, the way by which she was to arrive at the conquest of the empire : it was a project to settle the succession to the throne. It suggested that, immediately after the death of Elizabeth, Peter should be pro- claimed Emperor, but conjointly with Catherine, who should become co-partner in all his rights and all his authority. It need not be said that Bestoujef did not forget himself. He reserved to himself nearly all the power, leaving to Catherine "'id her husband only what his position as a subject did not allow him to take. Catherine showed on this occasion the tact of which she had already given proof. She was far from discouraging the project, but she made her reserves. She did not believe, she said, in the possibility of its execution. Perhaps the old fox did not believe it any more himself. He went over the scheme again, turned it about, made additions and alterations, submitted it again to THE YOUNG COURT 107 the interested party, then made fresh corrections, and appeared absorbed in the task. There was sharp practice on both sides ; but the ice was broken, and there were other points on which it ,was easy to agree. Thus was Catherine urged, from two sides at once, to come out of the reserve — a forced reserve, certainly — in which she had hitherto been kept. She was by no means disinclined. All her tastes and instincts urged her forward. Held back for a time by a sentiment of prudence which was only too well justified, she ventured timidly at first, then more and more boldly, till finally she brought herself within a hair’s-brea'dth of ruin. It is but just to add that neither Bestoujef nor Williams, the allies of to-day, the adversaries of to-morrow, showed any sort of discretion, first by- joining to spread abroad the growing fame of the Grand Duchess, their common work, then in quarrelling over her when events had set them at variance. Bestoujef staked. his w'hole hand, and endeavoured to increase his stake as best he could. As for Williams, he showed himself per- fectly reckless. The Englishman joined to a certain practical ability, and a very clear sense of things, an extraordinary do.se of imagination and a strange capacity for making blunders. He had the most chimerical ideas in his head ; he arranged things his own way, and whenever chance or providence disposed them otherwise, he refused to accept his defeat. He was a very Gascon of England. When, in August 1755, Hie had secured the renewal of the treaty of subsidies between England and Russia, he chanted vic- tory. He had gained-over Bestoujef, conquered io8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSriA Elizabeth, and beguiled Catherine through the medium of Poniatowski. He already saw a hundred thousand Russians in the field, putting to flight the enemies of his Britannic Majesty. These enemies were of course France and Prussia. Suddenly he learnt that the Treaty of West- minster had been concluded (January 5, 1756) and Prussia was now an English ally. Williams was nothing daunted. The hundred thousand Russians would now have only one enemy to fight instead of two. They would triumph on the banks of the Rhine instead of conquering on the banks of the^ Spree. They would merely have to march a little further. Meanwhile the adven- turous diplomatist put himself at the disposal of Frederick. Frederick had had no envoy at St. Petersburg since 1750; Williams took upon himself to supply the place. By means of his colleague at Berlin he set on foot an active exchange of correspondence, intended to keep his Prussian Majesty au courant with what happened in Russia. Elizabeth, on hearing the news of the Anglo-Prussian Treaty, at first refused to ratify her own treaty of subsidies with England ; then, on signing the ratification, February 26, 1756, she added a clause which limited it to the single event of England being attacked by Prussia. This was simply to annihi- late the treaty, and to make game of both Prussia and England. Williams did not give way even yet. Amidst all this chassd-croisd of alliances, this general break-up of European politics which seemed likely to be its result, he remained faith- ful to his programme, which was to secure the co-operation of the Russian forces against the THE YOUNG COURT 109 enemies of England. His hatred of France led him forward blindfold. The Treaty of Versailles, even (May i, 1756), did not succeed in opening his eyes. He did not or would not see, that, allied as it now was with Austria, France had become, with regard to Russia, not so much an enemy to oppose, as a natural associate in the new group of rival powers and interests, and a brother in arms in the coming conflict. It was just then that he wished to push forward the union that he had made with the young court and the power that he professed to wield over the dispositions and procedures of the Grand Duchess. In his infatuation he succeeded in making Frederick believe that Catherine had the power and the will to hold back the Russian army, at the very moment when the commands of Elizabeth had sent it into the field ; that at least she could keep it inactive. When Frederick was undeceived it was too late : Apraksyne had taken Memel, and inflicted on the Prussian army a sanguinary defeat at Gross-Jaegerdorf, August 1759. But the illusion lasted two years, during which Williams, speaking of Catherine as his ‘dear friend,’ varied at will her sentiments for or against the King of Prussia, boasted of the information, equivalent to a betrayal of the secrets of state, that he received from her, and ended by imputing to this Russian Princess the position of a common spy in the service of a power with which Russia was at war. What part was really played by Catherine during this period, one of the most troublous periods of her life, it is difficult to know for certain. Williams, most assuredly, deceived both no CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Frederick and himself. German historians are agreed in accusing the English cabinet of having retouched the despatches of the presumptuous ambassador, with whom the cabinet at Berlin was in communication. In one particular instance, Williams appears to have carried his infatua- tion to the point of inventing a measure and a letter of Catherine, both entirely imaginary. It is no less certain that the attentions of Williams and the homage of Poniatowski did not permit the Grand Duchess to remain entirely disin- terested in this grave crisis, or even indifferent to the English interests. The receipts that the banker Wolff continued to give on the orders of the English ambassador had their eloquence. But, on the other side, the advances of Bestoujef were not to be lightly regarded by Catherine ; now, the chancellor, whom Erederick had not succeeded in corrupting, insisted that the pact of alliance concluded with Austria should be faith- fully carried out. All that must have brought the political pupil of Montesquieu and of Brantdme into many a hazardous and perhaps contradictory undertaking. Moreover, what she did not do, Poniatowski did, or seemed to do, for her ; and the Pole began to be very stirring. He was soon so very much so, that, in the allied courts of Vienna and Versailles, he passed for the worst enemy that they had at St. Petersburg, a man who must be got rid of at any price. The unofficial character of the personage seemed to render the under- taking easy. Vigorous attempts were made, but they met with an unexpected obstacle . love had been left out of the question. Williams himself THE YOUNG COURT III was more easily dislodged from a post in which he seemed to be doing as much or more for Prussia than for England itself He left in October 1757. Poniatowski remained. But Catherine was thus brought definitely into the field of politics, which had been so expressly forbidden to her. We must add that her ddbut was far from promising. At her first trial she made use of her newly-acquired influence in certain personal interests to which she could not confess, and which were, in certain respects, against the in- terests of her adopted country as they were then understood by those who had their direction. She had entered politics on account of love ; love followed and kept her there. This episode of her life is so decisive that we must dwell upon it yet further. Ill Poniatowski had pleased Catherine because he spoke the language of Voltaire and also that of the heroes of Mile, de Scuderi. He gained the ^ favour of the Grand Duke by mocking at the King of Poland and his minister, which was an indirect way of doing homage to Frederick. He made no further conquests at St. Petersburg. Elizabeth looked upon him askance, and seemed inclined to give way to the demand of the Court of Saxony that he should be recalled. By what title did he claim a place in the English Embassy, being neither an Englishman nor a diplomatist ? The argument was of small avail. Personages more enigmatical still, diplomatic agents even less authorised, swarmed in every court in Europe. \ Ill CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA That of St. Petersburg was no exception. D’^! on had just arrived there. Poniatowski, nevertheless, was obliged for the moment to obscure himself. Catherine let him go, being certain that he would come back again. He came back three months later, with the official title of Polish Minister. This was the doing of Bestoujef, who persisted in making himself agreeable. Finding the ground more solid under his feet, the Pole did not wait long before he began to concern himself in the affairs of his uncles the Czartoryskis, to the detriment of those of his master, the King of Poland; and in those of his friend Williams, to the benefit of the King of Prussia. Frequently Catherine seconded his doings, adding postscripts to the letters he wrote to Bestoujef. Even if her intervention did not appear openly, it was easily to be guessed, and that came to the same thing. There was soon a new chorus of complaints on the part of the French and Austrian ambassadors. At one moment, Douglas, the aide de-camp of the Mar- quis de I’Hopital, fancied the way was open to a good understanding with the young court and with Poniatowski himself. After some in- decision and a certain amount of resistance, the Marquis de I’Hopital came over to his way of thinking, and abandoned his opposition to the presence of the Polish diplomatist in the capital of the North. But at this very moment a violent quarrel broke out between the representative of French interests at St. Petersburg and its repre- sentative at Warsaw, the Comte de Broglie. The latter clamoured with might and main for the recall of Poniatowski. Alas ! it was the French THE YOUNG COURT 113 interests themselves, the influence of France in the East, that were to founder in the conflict of irreconcilable ideas and principles. In September 1757 Douglas paid a visit to Warsaw, and in a series of conferences with the Comte de Broglie did his best to convince him of the necessity of a radical change of front in regard to the defence of the French interests in the east of Europe. In his eyes the Treaty of Versailles, which had brought France into the system of alliances which included Russia and Austria, would have as its consequence the rupture of the old alliances of the King, both with the Porte and with Poland, The gain of a powerful ally at St. Petersburg would make up for the loss of influence at Warsaw and at Constantinople. There was the problem, and it was this view of things that had convinced both Douglas and the Marquis de I’Hbpital of the possibility of dis- arming the hostility of the young court, and even of obtaining the support of Poniatowski. From the moment they declared frankly and entirely for Russia, the nephew of the Czartoryskis, occupied in the advancement at St. Petersburg of the Russophilist programme of his uncles, would become their natural ally. But the Comte de Broglie was by no means disposed to adopt these views. As for those who had to fix his line of conduct in this respect, they were simply precluded from having, on this as on many other points, any clear and definite view at all. Those who presided in France at the direc- tion of foreign affairs, and by this we mean not only the anonymous directors of the private politics of Louis XV., the holders of the ‘ royal lU CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA secret,’ but also the official ministers, Rouille, the Abbe de Bernis, or Choiseul, pretended on the contrary, though in an uncertain measure, to reconcile the most irreconcilable things, the change of system with the immutability of principles, the co-operation of the Russian army against a common enemy, with the retention of the old clientele, whether Turkish, Polish, or Swedish, an advance towards an obscurely-realised future with fidelity to the past. If there was a divergence of opinion in this respect between the two powers of direction, between the ministerial cabinet and the mysterious laboratory wherein were elaborated these often contradictory despatches, it was merely a question of limit and degree. Doubtless, while on one side they insisted on seeing in Russia only the barbarous element, with which no under- standing was possible, which was merely to be driven back into Asia, on the other they were inclined to look for an ally in the formidable empire created by Peter the Great, an ally, if not too desirable, at all events possible, and perhaps necessary in the more or less distant future ; a power, in any case, which had to be reckoned with, and to which it was well to make some concessions, even on the banks of the Vistula. But both parties were agreed in limiting these concessions. More than a century was destined to elapse before a series of cruel deceptions, of sterile efforts, of disasters shared, alas ! by those unhappy dependants who were not to be sacrificed, and who were, after all, sacrificed to a common illusion, had at last proved the essential mistake of such a conception of things and of such a scheme. Meanwhile they persisted in the THE YOUNG COURT ”S extraordinary resolution of defending Poles, Turks, and Swiss against the Russians, while at the same time in alliance with Russia. As for the Comte de Broglie, he had come, after his long residence in Poland, to identify himself with the Polish party, we might almost say to confound the interests of France, not even only with those of Poland, but with those of one of the parties among which the republic was divided ; and this party was precisely the one opposed to the Russian interests and to the powerful Czartoryski family, which would advance those interests and their own with them. The result of all this was, that the ambassador of the King at Warsaw received in October orders at once official and secret to press for the recall of Count Poniatowski, which he did with all ardour. In November the thing was done. Briihl had given way. ‘ The blow has been struck,’ wrote the Marquis de I’Hopital to the Abbe de Bernis ; ‘ it must now be followed up.’ But he added that the matter had been done much too brusquely. ‘ The consequence will be,’ he said, ‘ a lively resentment against me on the part of the chancellor Bestoujef, and a bitter grudge on the part of the Grand Duke and Duchess. ... I cannot help letting you know that, in my opinion, M. le Comte de Broglie has put into all this much too great a heat and passion. He has made it a point of honour towards his party to inflict this mortification on the Ponia- towskis and the Czartoryskis. In short, it is his impegno! In general, I’Hopital found that the Comte de Broglie, ‘ accustomed to take the lead,’ took somewhat too lofty a tone with his colleague, i6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA and acted in regard to him more as if he were Minister of Foreign Affairs than Ambassador. This authoritative diplomatist also permitted himself to indulge in certain pleasantries that seemed to his colleague out of place. He had written to d’Eon : ‘You will perhaps be surprised at the recall of M. Poniatowski ; send him back to me quickly ; I have an inexpressible desire to see him again, and pay him my compliments on the success of his negotiations.’ But Poniatowski did not leave. First of all hr. pretended to be ill, thus putting off his leave of absence from week to week and from month to month. And meanwhile an event happened which changed the whole situation of affairs and the very position of the foes on the European battle-field. France, which before had taken the tone, if not of a master, at least of one who must be respectfully listened to, at St. Petersburg as at Warsaw, had soon to lower its demands. This event was Rosbach (Nov. 5, 1757). There was no more question for the cabinet of Versailles of imposing its will. The Grand Duchess made her own more emphatically felt by the chancellor Bestoujef. The latter reminded her of the orders of the Prime Minister of Poland, recalling Poniatowski, now put on half- pay. ‘ The Prime Minister of Poland would go without his bread to please you,’ replied Catherine drily. Bestoujef pointed out the necessity of looking after his own position. ‘ No one will molest you if you do what I wish you to do.* One sees that with the lofty idea of the power of Russia, gained at the cost of the present eclipse of France, a not less lofty idea of her THE YOUNG COURT I17 own importance had taken hold of the future Empress. This was another consequence of Rosbach. And the event justified both suppositions. Briihl, the Saxon Minister, did indeed go without his bread to please the chancellor of all the Russias ; Poniatowski received the order to re- main at his post, and things returned to their former courses. As for the Marquis de I’Hopital, he gave up, once for all, his attempts to accom- modate himself to a state of things in which he had ceased to have the least weight. He ceased to try to put back the current, and ‘ let things drift.’ He did not even seek to enter into relations with the young court, where he saw ‘ a little stormy sea,’ full of reefs. It was Poniatowski himself who, six months later, gave the Comte de Broglie the satisfaction that he had no doubt lost all hope of obtaining. To render himself impossible at St. Petersburg, after all he had done there, did not seem an easy thing for him. He succeeded however in doing so. The story has been differently told ; we shall follow the narrative of the principal actor in it, which is confirmed, almost throughout, by the testimony of the Marquis de I’Hopital. The Grand Duke had not yet said his say in regard to the presence of the Polish diplomatist in Russia, and the felations he had established there. It is true that he was absorbed by a new passion: Elizabeth Vorontsof, the last of his mistresses, had just entered upon the scene. An interference on his part, however, remained a quite possible, if not probable, eventuality. It came in July 1758. Issuing from the chateau of ii8 CATHERINE II. OE RUSSIA Oranlenbaum in the early morning, Poniatowski was arrested by one of the pickets of cavalry that Peter planted round his house as in time of war. He was in disguise. He was roughly seized and hauled before the Grand Duke. Peter insisted on knowing the truth, which in itself did not seem in the least to trouble him. ‘ It could all be arranged,’ he said, as long as he was taken into confidence. The silence which the prisoner felt bound to keep exasperated him. He concluded that this nocturnal visit had been meant for him, and he pretended to believe that his life was in danger. Had it not been for the presence of mind of a compatriot, recently arrived in St. Petersburg in the suite of Prince Charles of Saxony, Poniatowski might have paid dearly for his imprudence. But the Grand Duke, none the less, talked for some days of what he would do to this stranger who had tried to elude the vigilance of his outposts. Catherine was so alarmed that she resigned herself to a great sacrifice : Elizabeth Vorontsof received from her the most unhoped- for advances and civilities. Poniatowski, on his part, made his supplications to the favourite. ‘ It would be so easy for you to render everybody happy,’ he whispered in her ear, at one of the court receptions. Elizabeth Vorontsof desired nothing better. The same day, after a talk with the Grand Duke, she suddenly introduced Poniatowski into his Highness’s apartment. ‘What a fool you have been,’ cried Peter, ‘ not to have taken me into your confidence before ! ’ And he explained laughingly that he had not the least wish to be jealous ; the precautions taken THE YOUNG COURT 119 round Oranienbaum were merely for his personal safety. On this Poniatowski, not forgetting to be diplomatic, broke out into compliments on his Highness’s military arrangements, whose per- fection he had found out to his expense. The good humour of the Grand Duke increased. ‘ Since we are all good friends,’ said he, ‘ there is one wanting.’ ‘ And with that,’ relates Poniatowski in his memoirs, ‘ he goes into his wife’s room, pulls her out of bed, without leaving her time to put on her stockings or shoes, and without so much as a petticoat, brings her in to us, and says, pointing to me, “Well, here he is, and I hope you will be satisfied.’” They supped gaily together, and the party did not break up till four o’clock in the morning. Elizabeth Vorontsof was obliging enough to make a personal explanation to Bestoujef, in order to convince him that the presence of Poniatowski at St. Petersburg had ceased to be displeasing to the Grand Duke. Festivities were recommenced next day, and for some weeks this astonishing minage a quatre had the best of times together. ‘ I often went to Oranienbaum,’ writes Ponia- towski ; ‘ I got there in the evening, mounted by a secret staircase to the Grand Duchess’s apart- ments, where I found the Grand Duke and his mistress ; we supped together ; after which the Grand Duke departed with his mistress, saying to us, “ Now, my children, you don’t require me any longer.” And I stayed as long as I liked.’ Rumours of the adventure, however, began to circulate at court, and, lenient as every one was in matters of this kind, it made a scandal. The 120 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Marquis de I’Hopital thought it his duty to profit by it in order to renew his demands for the dis- missal of Poniatowski. This time he succeeded. Pojiiatfiiwski _was obli g ed to go, Elizabeth saw that the reputation of her nephew and heir was at stake. Two years later the Baron de Breteuil was charged to do all he could to wipe out the impression caused on Catherine by this painful event. He only half succeeded. It is true that, uniting as he did the position of official representative of French politics with that of secret agent, he had a double part to play, and, while assuring the Grand Duchess ‘that his Most Christian Majesty not only would make no oppo- sition to the return of Count Poniatowski to St. Petersburg, but that he was even disposed to lend himself to the measures that were being taken to induce the King of Poland to take up his cause,’ he was obliged also, ‘ without open offence to the Grand Duchess, to avoid granting her wishes,’ The extravagant dualism which had resulted in France from the fantasy of the sovereign in conflict with the serious duties of sovereignty, came out very eloquently in this comedy. Cathe- rine was not duped by it. Having with some difficulty obtained a private interview with the Grand Duchess, Breteuil had to listen to some flattering speeches. ‘ I have been brought up to love the French,’ said she, ‘ I have long had a preference for them ; it is a sentiment that your services bring back to me.’ ‘ I wish,’ wrote the Baron after this interview, ‘ that I could render the fire, the dexterity, and the effrontery that Madame la Grande Duchesse put into this conver- THE YOUNG COURT 121 sation.’ But he added sadly : ‘ All that means, perhaps, and will continue to mean, nothing but the excess of her thwarted passion.’ He judged truly. Poniatowski was to return to St. Petersburg no more — until, indeed, thirty- five years later, a dethroned king. Soon, ab- sorbed by other preoccupations, distracted too by other amours, Catherine herself lost interest in the success of her own and others’ tentatives in this direction. But the leaven of spite against France remained in her heart. The more, as she did not, in giving up hope of seeing her Pole again, give up thinking of him. Fidelity, at least a certain fidelity, odd enough at times, it must be admitted, was a part of her character. As she had associated politics with love, she had to keep her love-affairs in line with her other affaifs. Now she could sometimes — not always ^^^e consistent in the latter. It is thus that, in all her changes of lovers, she continued to love "some of them, even beyond the passing infatua- tion of the heart and senses. She loved them in another way, more calm, but as definite, if not more so, tranquilly, ‘ imperturbably,’ as the Prince de Ligne was to say. There was a certain effrontery also, and even a little cynicism, in the edict that she addressed in 1763 to her ambassador at Warsaw, recommending the can- didature of the future King of Poland, and stating that he ‘had rendered, during his resi- dence at St. Petersburg, more services to his country than any other minister of the republic.’ But there was tenderness as well as a wise fore- thought in the measures that she took at the same epoch, in order to pay all the debts of this 9 123 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA singular candidate. In 1764 the supposition of a marriage which would commingle the two empires having taken general hold of people’s minds, Catherine had recourse to an ingenious expedient to reassure her excitable neighbours. She wrote to Obrescof, her ambassador at Con- stantinople, that he was to communicate to the Porte the news of imaginary parleyings under- taken by Poniatowski in view of an alliance with one of the first families of Poland. And, her heart being now disinterested in regard to a romance thus followed up across time and space, without her mind and her ambition having lost interest in it, she gave simultaneous orders to Count Kaiserling and Prince Repnine, her repre- sentatives in Poland ; so that, after his election, Poniatowski really did marry a Pole, or at least intended to. It was a measure designed to calm the disquietude of the Porte, perhaps also to raise an insuperable barrier between past and present. Alas ! a near future was to remove from her this care, leaving, in place of the obstacle she had wished for, a bottomless gulf. This is how Poniatowski, after he had become King of Poland, v/rote, two years later, to his representative at the court of St. Petersburg, Count Rzewuski : — ‘ The last orders given to Repnine to intro- duce dissension even in the legislation have come like a very thunderbolt upon the country and myself. If it is .'■‘'y, possible, make the Empress see that the Crown she has given me will become a very Nessus’ shirt for me, to burn and bring me to a fearful end.’ The lover of former days was now, for Cathe- THE YOUNG COURT 123 rine, merely the executant of her supreme will in a half-conquered country. She replied by a letter in which she ordered this improvised king, the fragile work of her hands, to let Repnine have his way ; if not, ‘ there will only remain to the Empress the continual regret of having been so much deceived in the friendship, the way of thinking, and the sentiments, of the King.’ Poniatowski insisting still, she sent him this last and sinister warning, which already foretells the brutal measures of the Salderns, Drevitchs, and Souvarofs, the future stranglers of the last national resistances : ‘ A]! that now remains for me is to leave this matter to its fate. ... I close my eyes on the consequences, flattered neverthe- less that your Majesty should believe me so far disinterested, in all I have done for yourself and for the nation, as not to reproach me with having set up in Poland a target for my arms. They shall never be directed against those . . . ’ Here the pen of the Empress paused ; she had written, ‘ Those I love ’ ; she erased the words and substituted ‘ those to whom I wish well ’ ; then she ended with this phfTse, which betrays all her thoughts, and which must have soundeeP^ in the unhappy Poniatowski’s ears like the roll of drums before the fire of the squadron : ‘ As I shall not withhold them when it seems to me that their use may be useful.’ We shall not have to refer again, other than cursorily, to this lia.so'h, destined to such sin- gular and tragic reversion. It held, indeed, a less important place in the life of Catherine than in that of the unfortunate people called to play the part of expiatory victim. After having 124 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA risked her reputation, which she was no longer afraid of compromising, and her credit, which she knew so well how to keep intact, Catherine finally gained an enormous profit therefrom. We might say that Poland died of it, if nations had not more profound reasons for living and dying. We must now return to the period in which the heyday of this love affair was about to end, and to this strange interior, outwardly so like a prison, a guard-house, and a villa, which screened, indiscreetly enough, so many mysteries. IV V y In her connections, political with Williams and Bestoujef, amatory and political with Ponia- towski, Catherine is no longer the recluse of the past, watched by officers of the court in the guise of spies, ill-treated by her husband, terrorised over by Elizabeth. The chancellor’s agents have been mastered one by one, and finally he himself has undergone the same fate. Peter remains the same gross, extravagant, and in- supportable being that he has always been, ‘a strange brute, streaked with insanity,’ according to St. Beuve’s expression. He still knows how to render himself odious. yFrequently he comes to bed dead drunk, and between two hiccups he speaks to his wife on his favourite subject, his amours with the Duchess of Courland, who is a hunchback, or with Freiline Vorontsof, who is marked with small-pox. If Catherine pretends to go to sleep, he pummels her with hands and feet to keep her awake until sleep takes hold of himself. He is almost always drunk, and he y \ THE YOUNG COURT 125 becomes more and more mad. In 1758 Cathe- rine gives birth to a daughter, the Czarevna Anna, of whom Pdniatowski is supposed to be the father. At the moment when the pains of childbed take hold of her, at half-past two in the morning, Peter, informed of it, arrives, ‘ booted and spurred, in his Holstein uniform, a belt round his waist, and an enormous sword by his side.’ On Catherine’s inquiry as to why he has put on these accoutrements, he replies that ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed, that in this garb he is ready to act as duty bids him, that the duty of a Holstein officer is to defend the ducal house, according to his oath, against its enemies, and that, believing his wife was alone, he had comd to her aid.’ He can scarcely stand on his feet. /He has at times, however, as we have seen, his agreeable moments, an occa- sional access of good humour or an accidental complaisance, which he exaggerates, in his usual extravagant way, but of which his wife has the benefit. It is partly that, like others, he has come under the charm of the Grand Duchess, or at least under the power of her mind and temperament. He is often obliged to recognise the wisdom of her counsels, and the accuracy of her views. He has become accustomed to go to her in all his difficulties, and little by little there has come into his dull brain some notion of the superiority that he is one day to realise so terribly. At the fatal moment it is this idea, haunting and discouraging him, which will paralyse his defence.! ‘ The Grand Duke,’ writes Catherine in her memoirs, ‘ for a long time called me Madame la 126 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Ressource, and, however vexed he might be with me, if ever he found himself in distress on any point, he came running to me at full speed, to have my advice, and, as soon as he had it, he would dash away again at full speed.’ As for Elizabeth, worn out by an irregular life, haunted by terrors which will not allow her to sleep two nights following in the same room, and which have caused her to search through all her empire for a man sufficiently slumber-proof to watch all night by her bedside without dozing, she is now only the shadow of herself. ‘ This princess,’ writes the Marquis de I’Hdpital, under date January 6th, 1759, ‘has sunk into a singular state of superstition. She remains whole hours before an image for which she has great devotion ; she talks to it, consults it ; she comes to the opera at eleven, sups at one, and goes to bed at five. Count Chouvalof is the man in favour. His family have taken possession of the Empress ; and affairs go as God wills.’ This new favourite, Ivan Chouvalof, does not fear to awaken the jealousy and the anger of the Empress by paying, under her very eyes, assiduous court to the Grand Duchess, who is now the observed of all. He covets ‘the double post,’ declares the Baron de Breteuil, ‘dangerous as it is.’ From the year 1757 the Marquis de I’Hopital is alarmed and scandalised to see the young court (and the young court, politically speaking, is Catherine) ‘break a lance openly with the Em- press, establish a sort of counter-cabal.’ ‘ They say,’ he observes, ‘ that the Empress has given up objecting to anything, and leaves them free course.’ About the same time, in a conversation THE YOUNG COURT 127 in which all the foreign ministers take part, the Grand Duchess, speaking to the ambassador of the King in reference to her love of riding, cries : ‘ There is not a bolder woman than I ; I am perfectly reckless.’ D’Eon, who saw her then, thus depicts her : — ‘The Grand Duchess is romantic, ardent, pas- sionate ; her eyes are brilliant, their look fasci- nating, glassy, like those of a wild beast. Her brow is high, and, if I mistake not, there is a long and awful future written on that brow. She is kind and affable, but, when she comes near me, I draw back with a movement which I cannot control. She frightens me.’ She frightens, indeed, and fascinates a wider and wider circle, making of these persons the slaves of her will, of her ambition, of her passions, now from day to day more ardent. Nor is it only in the domain of politics that she begins to find elbow-room, and if, in one respect, the young court resembles a stormy sea, as the Marquis de I’Hdpital would have it, the Baron de Breteuil sees in it, no doubt, a certain resemblance with the Parc aux Cerfs. Licence is everywhere the order of the day, during these last years of the reign of Elizabeth. In March 1755 the Saxon Minister, Funcke, gives an account of the repre- sentation at the Imperial Theatre of a Russian opera. Cep hale and Procris. Elizabeth is present, the Grand Duke, and all the court ; and it is simply the court, with all its depravities, which is put on the stage, in a series of tableaux so revolt- ing that the good Funcke is obliged to draw a veil over them. To this same year belongs the following episode (told in Catherine’s memoirs). 128 CATHERINE lU OF RUSSIA which opens a new chapter in the history of her private life, that of nocturnal rambles, which render entirely illusory the pretence of surveil- lance still exercised over her. In the course of the winter, Lev Narychkine, who, faithful to his buffooning instincts, is accustomed to mew like a cat at the Grand Duchess’s door, to announce his presence, makes the familiar signal one evening, just as Catherine is on the point of going to bed. He is admitted, and proposes to go and see the wife of his elder brother, Anna Nikitichna, who is ill. ‘When?’ ‘To-night.’ ‘You are mad!’ ‘ I am quite collected ; nothing is easier.’ And he explains his project, and the precaution to be taken. They will pass through the Grand Duke’s apartments ; he will never notice them, as he will certainly be at table with some jolly boon-companions, if he is not already under the table. There is not the least risk. He puts it so convincingly that Catherine hesitates no longer. She has herself undressed and put to bed by la Vladislavova, while at the same time she gives orders to a Calmuck whom she has always at hand, and whom she has trained to a blind obedience, to procure for her a suit of men’s clothes. As soon as la Vladislavova has gone, she gets up, and goes off with Lev Narychkine. They arrive without difficulty at Anna Nikit- ichna’s, whom they find in good health and in gay company. They have a delightful time, and all promise to meet again. They soon do, and Poniatowski, naturally, is of the company. Some- times they return on foot through the most ill- famed streets of St. Petersburg. Then, when the winter has become too severe, they find THE YOUNG COURT 129 means to renew their pleasures without exposing the Grand Duchess to the inclement nights, and the jolly party ends by transporting itself to the Empress’s bedroom, always through the apartments of the Grand Duke, who suspects nothing. After her second confinement, the nights not being enough for her, Catherine arranges to receive during the day whenever, whoever, and in what manner soever she pleases. Of late she has suffered somewhat from the cold; she there- upon seizes the pretext for arranging by her bed- side, by means of an assemblage of screens, a sort of little retreat, where she will be properly screened from the draught. Here she gives frequent hospitality to select visitors, such as Lev Narychkine or Count Poniatowski. The latter comes and goes in a great blond wig, which renders him unrecognisable, and if on the way he is stopped with ‘Who goes there he answers, ‘ The Grand Duke’s musician.’ The ‘cabinet,’ due to the inventive spirit of Catherine, is so ingeniously constructed that she is able, without quitting her bed, to put herself into com- munication with those who are there, or, by drawing one of the curtains of the bed, to hide them entirely from view. One day, while the two Narychkines, Poniatowski, and some others are hidden behind this protecting curtain, she receives Count Chouvalof, who comes to see her on behalf of the Empress, and who leaves her without the least suspicion that she was not alone. When Chouvalof has gone, Catherine declares that she is terribly hungry, orders six dishes, and, sending away the servants, she hiis 130 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA supper with her friends. Then she draws the curtain again, and, summoning the servants to take away the plates, she amuses herself with their astonishment at the sight of this extra- ordinary voracity. Doubtless her maids of honour are well aware of what is going on. But they have other things to do than to be concerned about it. They have their own daily and nightly visitors. To reach their rooms, it is true, they have to pass through that of their gouvernante, Mme. Schmidt, or that of the Princess of Courland, honorary directress of the establishment. But Mme. Schmidt, ill nearly every night with the in- digestion that she has given herself during the day, generally leaves the coast clear. As for the Princess of Courland, she has a weakness herself fora good-looking man. The Grand Duke’s rela- tions with her we have already seen. Neverthe- less, on the news that his wife is again enceinte, Peter has a momentary fit of ill humour. He does not remember being responsible for it. ‘ God knows where she gets them,’ he grumbles one day before the whole table ; ‘ I don’t at all know that the child is mine, and yet I shall have to take the responsibility.’ Lev Narychkine, who is present, hastens to » eport the remark to Catherine. She is not at all concerned. ‘You are children,’ she says, shrugging her shoulders. ‘ Go and find him, speak sharply to him, and make him swear that he has not slept with his wife for four months. After that, declare that you will report the fact to Count Alexander Chouvalof, the Grand Inquisitor of the Empire.’ She thus calls the head of the terrible ‘secret THE YOUNG COURT 131 chancellorship,’ which in our days has been re- placed by the famous third section. Lev Narych- . kine faithfully executes her commission. ‘ Go to the devil!’ replies the Grand Duke, whose mind is not quite easy on the subject. But, despite the assurance that she has shown on this occasion, the incident gives some uneasi- ness to Catherine. She sees in it a warning, and a commencement of hostilities in the decisive struggle for which she has for some time been preparing. She accepts the challenge. It is from this moment, if w'e may believe her, that she forms the resolution to ‘ follow an independent line,’ and we know where these simple words will lead her. The last agony of Peter III. in the sinister house of Ropcha comes at the end of \j the way she has chosen. But it is at this same moment that she stands face to face with the crisis which in some hours and for some months threatens her with the ruin of all her hopes and ; all her ambitions. ' V On February 26th (14th, Russian style), 1758, the chancellor Bestoujef was arrested. At the same time field-n\arshal Apraksyne, com- mandant of the army sent into Prussia against Frederick, was removed from command and brought to trial. These two events, though they had not really a cause in common, seemed, in the eyes of the public, to hang together. We know what had taken place in the course of the last campaign. The capture of Memel and the victory of Gross-J aegersdorf, achieved by Aprak- 132 CATHERINE IT. OF RUSSIA syne in August 1757, had transported with joy the allies of Russia, and awakened in their minds the liveliest hopes. Already they saw Frederick lost and at bay, begging for mercy. Suddenly, instead of pushing forward and profiting by its advantages, the victorious army abandoned its position and beat a retreat so precipitately that phe would have thought the rd/es to be reversed, and the Prussian troops, instead of having re- ceived a bloody defeat, to have won another triumph. A great cry of indignation arose in the camp of Frederick’s enemies. Evidently Apraksyne had betrayed them. But why? It was known that he was an intimate friend of Bestoujef. It was known, too, that the Grand Duchess had written to him several times by the means and at the suggestion of the chancellor. That was quite enough. '^Evidently the field-marshal had carried out a plan concocted by the friends, new or old, of Prussia and England. Bestoujef, bought by Frederick, had won over Catherine, whose relations with Williams and Poniatowski rendered her only too likely to be so influenced, and between them both they had induced the victorious general to sacrifice his own glory, the interests of the common cause, and the honour of his flag. France especially was con- vinced of this. The Comte de Stainville, am- bassador of the King at Vienna, was instructed to propose a common application to Elizabeth for the dismissal of Bestoujef. Kaunitz reflected, and finally declined the proposition. He had, meanwhile, received information from St. Peters- burg which cleared Bestoujef and Catherine. The representative of the court of Vienna at, THE YOUNG COURT *33 St. Petersburg, Esterhazy, did not believe them culpable. The Marquis de I’Hopital was alone in supporting the accusation. He supported it to the very end. During the inquiry against the ex-chancellor, he wrote : — ‘ This first minister had found means to win over the Grand Duke and Duchess to use their influence with Apraksyne to hinder him from acting as vigorously and promptly as the Empress ordered him to do. These plots were made under her Majesty’s very eyes ; but as her health was then very uncertain, she was entirely taken up with it, whilst the whole court was at the disposition of the Grand Duke, and especially the Grand Duchess, who was gained over by the chevalier Williams and by English money, with which this ambassador supplied her by means of her jeweller Bernard!, who has confessed all. The Grand Duchess had the indiscretion, not to say temerity, to write a letter to General Apraksyne, in which she dispensed him from the oath that he had made to her not to bring the army into the field, and giving him permission to put it in action. M. de Bestoujef, having one day shown this letter to M. de Bucow, lieutenant-general of the Empress, who had come to St. Petersburg to push forward the operations of the Russian army, this officer immediately informed M. de Vorontsof, the chamberlain Schwalof, and M. le Comte Esterhazy. This was the first step in M. de Bestoujef s ruin.’ It is almost certain that if the conduct of the chancellor, as well as that of Catherine, appeared somewhat dubious in regard to this circumstance, they had neither of them any hand in the retreat t34 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA of Apraksyne’s army. Catherine took some trouble to clear her conduct and that of her sup- posed accomplice from all suspicion, and she did so at a time when she need not have minded confessing the truth. The movements of the Russian army after the victory of Gross-J aegers- tiorf were made in consequence of three councils ■pf war, held on the 27th August and the 13th and /28th September. General Fermor, who suc- ceeded Apraksyne in command, had been present at these councils, and had voted for the retreat. The army was dying of hunger*, and Apraksyne had foreseen that it would be so. The partisans of the Austrian alliance- had urged it forward without thinking of providing it with food. Those about Eli^beth, tqp, had -cried, heed- lessly enough, ‘A Berlin ! a Berlin ! ’ But it was thought well to give satisfaction to the clamours of the Austro-French party by sacri- ficing the marshal. As for Bestoujef, his ruin had long been decided "on, and the disgrace of Apraksyne was but a pretext to hasten his. The chancellor’s enemies had got scent of his project for eventually associating Catherine with the government of the empire. They insinuated to Elizabeth that among the minister’s papers would be found some endangering the safety of her crown. That decided her. Imagine the terror of Catherine on learning of this formidable event! Would she not seem to be the accomplice of the minister who had come to his downfall on an accusation of a definite state crime? Her letters to Apraksyne were nothing. But the great project which had been formed on her behalf, — what a menace seemed THE YOUNG COURT >35 to be suspended above her head ! The prison, torture perhaps ; and afterwards, what sort of disgrace ? the convent ? dismissal to Germany ? who knows, perhaps Siberia ? A cold shiver ran through her veins. This is what all her dreams were to end in ! But she soon took heart again. At this tragic moment we see her rise to the occasion, strong and resolute, calm and full of resources ; just as a near future was to show her, when, having done violence to fortune and snatched the supreme power, she was to weave out of the bloody vest- ments of Peter III. the most magnificent imperial mantle that woman has ever borne. Her edu- cation is done ; she is now in full possession of all her gifts, natural and acquired, of one of the most marvellous intellectual and physical organi- sations that have ever been made for combat, for the conduct of affairs, and for the government of men and things. She has not a moment’s hesitation. She faces the danger resolutely. The day after the chancellor’s arrest there is a state ball, in honour of the marriage of Lev Narychkine. Catherine appears at the ball. She is smiling and unaffectedly gay. The charge of the trial which is on foot has been confided to three high dignitaries of the empire. Count Chouvalof, Count Boutourline, and Prince Troubetzkoi'. Catherine goes up to the last- named. ‘ What are these fine affairs that I have heard of.? ’ says she playfully. ‘ Have you found more crimes than criminals, or more criminals than crimes?’ Surprised by such Trou- betzkoi stammers out some excuse or other. He and his colleagues have done what they CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 136 have been told to do. They have interrogated the supposed criminals. As for the crimes, they have yet to be found. Somewhat reassured, Catherine goes on to gather further information. ‘ Bestoujef is arrested,’ says Boutourline simply ; ‘ we have now to find out why.’ ^ So nothing has yet been discovered, and it is Catherine who, interrogating the two inquisitors of Elizabeth, and listening to their replies, has made a discovery. In their embarrassed air, in their eyes that dare not meet her own, she has divined the fear that she inspires already. Some hours later she breathes yet more freely : the Holstein minister Stampke has brought her a note from Bestoujef himself bearing these words : ‘ Have no fear in regard to that you know of ; I have had time to burn all.’ The old fox was not to be caught in the snare. Catherine can thus go forward without fear. The time is past when, counselled by Madame Kruse, one of her maids of honour, she had replied to the least reproach of the Empress, ‘ Vinovata matouchka (I am in the wrong, little mother),’ which produced, it seems, a marvellous effect. The Marquis de I’Hopital, whose advice she seeks, no doubt in order that she may put him on the wrong scent, recommends her to make full confession to the Empress. She is far enough from doing that ! To begin with, she makes use of Stampke, of Poniatowski, her valet de chambre Chkourine, to keep up an active correspondence with Bes- toujef and the other prisoners implicated in the accusation against him, the jeweller Bernard!, the Russian master, Adadourof, and lelaguine, a friend of Poniatowski. A little servant, who is THE YOUNG COURT 137 i allowed to look after the ex-chancellor, leaves and takes the letters from a heap of bricks used as a letter-box, which serves also a double purpose, for the love-correspondence with Poniatowski is carried on by the same means. The Pole gives her a rendezvous for the evening at the opera, and Catherine promises to be there with- out fail, coHie que coute. She finds it no easy matter to keep her word, for at the last moment the Grand Duke, who has made his own plans for the evening, and who does not wish to have them upset by his wife going out with her maids of honour, especially one of them, the Freiline Vorontsof, puts in an objection. He goes so far as to countermand the orders that the Grand Duchess has given, and forbids the horses to be put in the carriage. Catherine declares that she will go to the theatre if she has to go on foot; but first she will write to the Empress^ to complain of the ill-treatment of the Grand^ Duke, and to ask permission to go back to her parents in Germany. Just this — a forced, humili- ating return to her native country, to a narrow horizon, to mediocrity, to the misery of the domestic hearth — is of all things what she now fears the most. Where, even, could she return Her father is no more ; she had mourned his death in 1747. She had even been hindered from mourning it too long; she had been told at the end of a week that that was enough, and that the deceased not having worn a crown, etiquette did not allow her a longer mourning. As for her mother, she herself had had to leave Germany, in consequence of a well known inci- dent, which had brought about the occupation of 10 138 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA) the Duchy of Zerbst by Frederick. In August 1757 the Abb6 de Bernis had sent a special emissary to Zerbst, the Marquis de Fraignes, ‘ with the view of inspiring, in the mind of Madame la Grande- Duchesse of Russia, through Madame la Princesse de Zerbst, her mother, the desired feelings.’ Frederick, hearing of the presence in his neighbourhood of a French officer, ordered a detachment of his huzzars to capture him. Surprised in his sleep, de Fraignes made a spirited defence. He barri- caded himself in his room, shot the first Prussian who crossed the threshold, roused the entire town, and was saved, and taken to the castle. Frederick, who would not be thus balked, sent a whole corps of soldiers with cannon to besiege the refractory Frenchman. De Fraignes at last gave in. The Duchy and town of Zerbst had to pay the expenses of the war. The reigning Duke, who was now the brother of Catherine, sought refuge at Hamburg. The mother took shelter in Paris, where, though she seemed to have suffered for France, and to some extent through it, she was not welcomed. Her liking for intrigue and her restless spirit were feared, though it seemed useful, all the same, to have in her a sort of surety, and a powerful hold upon the Grand Duchess. But it is precisely this which alarmed people at St. Petersburg. On the demand of the vice-chancellor Vorontsof, I’Hopital had to beg that the princess should be sent back. The reply was, naturally, that she had riot been asked to come, that, had it been thought of, she would have been detained at Brussels, but that she could not be turned away, now that THE YOUNG COURT 139 she was there, without gravely offending the Grand Duchess, and even without doing wrong to France: ‘for France,’ wrote de Bernis nobly, ‘ has always been the refuge of unhappy princes. The Princess of Zerbst, who has suffered partly by reason of her devotion to the king, has more right to it than most’ Where then would Catherine go if she were to leave Russia? To Paris? Assuredly Eliza- beth would never consent to lengthen the list of unhappy princes domiciled in France by addinof to it a Grand Duchess of Russia. But the more impossible it appeared to Catherine, the mpre she felt emboldened to beg for it Elizabeth, on her side, is in no haste to respond to this embarrassing request. She sends word to the Grand Duchess that she will have a per- sonal explanation with her. Days and weeks pass. The examination of Bestoujef and his,, supposed accomplices goes on apace, and, if one may believe the Marquis de I’Hopital, who follows feverishly the course of affairs, every day new proofs are discovered of his culpability, with- out, however, the opportunity of bringing in a sufficiently definite act of accusation to allow of a trial. Finally Catherine carries the day by main force. One night the Empress’s chaplain is awakened with the news that the Grand Duchess is very ill, and desires to confess herself. He goes, and allows himself to be convinced of the necessity of giving the alarm to the Czarina. Elizabeth is frightened, and agrees to what had been asked : for the sake of Catherine’s health an interview must be granted, and she grants it. 140 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Of this meeting we know only what Catherine has told us herself. Forty years afterwards her memory may well have deceived her in a few details, and this remark applies to the whole of her autobiography, from which we have, up to now, made numerous excerpts, and from which we must now, unhappily, cease to borrow ; for the memoirs stop at this exact point. There is no trace, however, of arrangement or straining after effect in these pages ; the narrative rises without preparation and without apparent effort to the most intensely dramatic point. One sees the scene of the interview : the Empress’s dressing- room, a vast apartment bathed in semi-obscurity, for it is the evening. At one end, like an altar, the table of white marble before which the Empress passes long hours, seeking the fled dream of her former beauty, shines in the shadow, its heavy ewers and basins of fine gold shedding dull gleams. In one of these basins the sharp eyes of Catherine, attracted by a streak of light, observe a roll of paper, which the hand of the Empress has evidently just thrown there. It is, she feels sure, the incriminating papers — her correspondence with Bestoujef and Apraksyne. From behind a screen comes a stifled murmur of voices : she recognises them. Her husband is there, and also Alexander Chouvalof ; doubtless as witnesses. At last Elizabeth appears, frigid in manner, brief in speech, her eyes hard and cold. Catherine throws herself at her feet. Without giving the Empress time to commence her ex- amination, she renews the request she has already made in writing : that she may be allowed to return to her mother. She has tears in her voice: THE YOUNG COURT 141 * it is the sorrowful complaint of a child whom strangers have ill-used, and who cries to go back to its own people. Elizabeth is surprised, and somewhat embarrassed. ‘How shall I explain your departure?’ she says. ‘ By saying that I have had the misfortune to offend your majesty.’ ‘ But how will you live ? ’ ‘As I did before your Majesty deigned to summon me hither.’ ‘ But your mother has had to leave her home. She is at Paris, as you know.’ ‘ In Cruth she has called on herself the hate of the King of Prussia through her love for Russia.’ The answer is triumphant. Every word tells. The embarrassment of the Czarina increases visibly. She endeavours, however, to reassume the offensive ; she reproaches the young woman with her excessive pride. Once, in the Summer Palace, she had been obliged to ask her if she had a stiff neck, so difficult did she seem to find it to incline her head before the Empress. The conversation thus turns to a vulgar quarrel of wounded self-esteem. Catherine makes herself humbler and smaller than a blade of grass. She has no recollection of the incident that her Majesty would recall to her mind. Doubtless she is too stupid to have understood the words that her Majesty deigned to address to her. But her eyes — those wild beast’s eyes of which d’Eon speaks— are fixed glitteringly upon the Empress. I'o avoid the look before which Troubetzkoi and Boutourline have trembled, Elizabeth goes to the other end of the room and speaks to the Grand 142 CATHERINE II, OF RUSSIA Duke. Catherine listens. Peter profits by the occasion to make accusations against his wife, whom he fancies already condemned. In violent terms he denounces her wickedness and ob- stinacy. Catherine flares up : ‘ I am wicked, I know,’ she cries, in a ringing voice ; ‘ I am and I ever will be against those who deal unjustly with me. Yes, I am obstinate with you, since I have learnt that one gains nothing by giving way to your caprices ! ’ ‘ Y ou see now ! ’ says the Grand Duke trium- phantly, addressing the Empress. But the Empress is silent. She has again met the look of Catherine, she has heard the ring of her voice, and she too is afraid. Once more she endeavours to intimidate the young woman. She orders her to avow the culpable relations that she has had with Bestoujef and Apraksyne ; to admit that she has written other letters to the latter besides those which have been found. On her refusal, she threatens to put the ex- chancellor to the torture. ‘ As it pleases your Majesty,’ replies Catherine coldly. Elizabeth is overcome. She changes her tone ; puts on a confidential air ; intimates to Catherine by a gesture that she cannot speak to her openly before the Grand Duke and Chouvalof. Catherine is prompt to seize the indication. Lowering her voice, she says, in a humble murmur, that she longs to open all her heart and mind to the Empress. Elizabeth is touched, and sheds a few tears. Catherine does the same. Peter and Chouvalof are astounded. To put an end to the scene, the Empress points out that it is very late. As a matter of fact it is three o’clock in the morning. Catherine retires, but THE YOUNG COURT before she has had time to go to bed, Alexander Chouvalof comes to her from the Empress, to bid her be of good courage, and to announce to her that she shall have another interview shortly with her Majesty. A few days after, the vice- chancellor in person is sent to her by Elizabeth to beg her to think no more of returning to Germany, At last, on the 23rd of May 1758, the two women meet again, and part apparently enchanted with one another. Catherine weeps once more, but it is tears of joy that flow from her eyes, ‘ as she thinks of all the benefits that the Empress has conferred upon her.’ Her victory is complete and decisive. CHAPTER II THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE I After the departure of Williams and Ponia- towski, after the fall of Bestoujef, Catherine found herself severed from all those with whom the chances of her destiny had brought her most in contact since her arrival in Russia. Zahar Tcher- nichef was always in the field ; Sergius Saltykof lived at Hamburg in a sort of exile. In April 1759 she lost her daughter. In the following year her mother died at Paris (none too soon, it must be said), and with her the last link was broken that attached her to the country of her birth. But in Russia she had no more isolation >44 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA to fear. Williams had been replaced by Keith, and Keith, it is true, applied himself with greater diligence to win the favour of the Grand Duke. Contrary to his predecessor, he found Peter quite efficient in the r 3 le that he intended him to play, a simple rd/e of reporter and spy. Peter showed himself perfect in the part. His perverse mind made him find a malicious pleasure in this base occupation. Ere long the services that he rendered to England and Prussia, to which Frederick gave a word of grateful remembrance in his History of the Seven Years' War, were of public notoriety at St. Petersburg. This did not, however, pre- vent Keith from making himself useful to the Grand Duchess, and, like Williams, lending her money. ^ Poniatowski, too, had been replaced. In the spring of 1759 there came to St. Petersburg Count Schwerin, aide-de-camp of the King of Prussia, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Zorndorf (August 25, 1758). He was treated as a distinguished stranger who had come to pay a visit to the capital. As a mere matter of form, two officers were appointed to have him in charge. One of these officers had signally distinguished himself at Zorndorf, where he had received three wounds without leaving his post. He had the fatalistic courage of the East. He believed in his destiny. He was right : was Gregory Orlof. There were five brothers in the Guards. Tall as his brother Alexis, endowed like him with herculean strength, Gregory Orlof excelled them all by the beauty of his calm regular face. He was handsomer than Ponia- towski, handsomer even than Sergius Saltykof, a THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 145 giant with the face of an angel. There was nothing else angelic about him, however. Of small intelligence and no education, living the ordinary life of his companions-at-arms, but living it a outrance, passing his time in gambling, drink- ing, and paying court to brunette and blonde, always ready to pick a quarrel, and to knock down any one who opposed him, ready to run any danger, and to stake his fortune on the cast of the die, the more so as he had nothing to lose, always having the air of being half intoxicated, even when by chance he had taken nothing, insatiable of every sort of pleasure, ready to go blindfolded into any adventure, his whole life a sort of madness ; such was the man who was now to enter into the life of the future Empress, and, still mingling politics and love, to hold for so long the second, if not the first place in her mind and heart. The first place was for ambition5-«i^ The traits we have indicated do not make pre- cisely a romantic hero, but there was nothing in them to scandalise Catherine. She too, all her life, loved adventures, and consequently she was far from disliking adventurers. The ‘ headlong recklessness ’ that she one day indicated in herself to the Marquis de I’Hbpital, went well with that of Gregory Orlof. More than beauty, more than wit, he possessed a charm which for long was in the eyes of Catherine the most powerful charm of all, which exercised over her a kind of fascina- tion, which at one time attracted her in Patiom- kine, and which chained her for years to the t uncouth person of this cyclops : ‘ he had a devil.* Konigsberg, where he had lived in garrison long kept the legend of his prowess as a viveur 146 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA He began to form the same reputation at St Petersburg, where in 1 760 he received the envied post of aide-de-camp of the General Grand Master of Artillery. The post was occupied by Count P. J. Chouvalof, cousin-german of the all- powerful favourite of Elizabeth. This helped to bring Orlof forward. Chouvalof had a mistress, Princess Helen Kourakine, whose beauty was the talk of St. Petersburg. Orlof became the rival of his new chief, and carried the day. This drew all eyes upon him, Catherine’s among the rest. But he was near paying dear for his triumph. “Chouvalof was not the man to pardon an injury of the sort. The confidence that Orlof had in his lucky star was not at fault : Chouvalof died before he had time to avenge himself, and Catherine continued to interest herself in the adventures of this young man who risked his head in turning that of a fair princess. It hap- pened that he lived just opposite the Winter Palace. This too helped in bringing Orlof and Catherine together. This officer, so full of charm and assurance, was naturally an influential man in the milieu in which he lived. And this milieu was to have a main importance for a Grand Duchess of Russia, who was determined ‘ to follow an independent line.’ In her memoirs, Catherine returns again and again to the earnest desire that she professes to have had from the first to conciliate the good will of an element that she feels to be the true and only support of her position in Russia. This element she calls the Russian ‘public.’ She is for ever concerned about what this ‘ public ’ will say or think of her. She tries to win it over to THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 147 her side. She would fain accustom it to rely on her in case of need, in order that she may rely on it in turn. This is a form of speech which is enough to inspire doubt concerning the authen- ticity of the document in which we find it. At the time when Catherine is supposed to have written out these confidences, she not merely paid small heed to this element of which she thought so much thirty years before, she had even had time to find out that it did not exist in Russia, at least in this acceptation, and with so well-defined a place of its own. Where could a ‘public’ of this kind, that is to say, a social col- lectivity, endowed with will and intelligence, susceptible of thinking and acting in common, have been found in the Russia of that time.? Nothing of the kind was to be seen. Above, there was a group of functionaries and of courtiers, religiously subjected to all the degrees of the tchine and to all the steps of human baseness, trembling at a look, annihilated by a gesture ; below, the people, that is to say, a quantity of muscular forces capable of being put to drudgery, the souls only taken into account in the adding up of units for an inventory ; between both, nothing, except the clergy, a considerable power, but little accessible, little manageable, more likely to act de haut en bas than de bas en haul, in no way to be utilised for political ends. It was not any of these that had supported Elizabeth, that had placed her on the throne. Something there was, nevertheless, that had done so, something which was strong and which could act on occa- sion, apart from all these : the army. Catherine loved Gregory Orlof for his beauty, £48 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA his courage, his giant’s build, his audacity, his recklessness. She loved him also for the four regiments that he and his brothers seemed to hold in the hollow of their hands. He, on his part, did not linger long at the feet of the Princess Kourakine. He was not the man to keep from lifting his eyes higher, especially when they met with such encouraging smiles. \ He was not the man, either, to make a mystery of his new amours. He had published the name of the Princess without caring what the Grand Master of Artillery would say to it ; he published the name of the Grand Duchess with equal com- posure. Peter said nothing : he was otherwise occupied. Elizabeth said nothing : she was dying. Catherine let him act as he pleased : she was not averse to having her name associated in the barracks with that of the fine Orlof, whom the officers adored, and for whom the men would have gone through fire. Later, in 1762, she wrote to Poniatowski, ‘ Osten remembers seeing Orlof follow me about everywhere and commit a thousand follies ; his passion for me was public property.’ She was well pleased to be followed about. After Poniatowski, this violent and headstrong soudard must doubtless have seemed to her a little strong in flavour. But she was not Rus- sified for nothing. The taste, the necessity even, of such contrasts was a part of th^ temperament of this people, which but yesterday had acquired a precocious civilisation, which had become her own people, with whom she little by little as- similated herself, taking their very inmost nature for her own. After a few months passed in the THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 149 most cunning refinements of the most luxurious ease, Patiomkine threw himself into a kibitka, and covered nearly 2000 miles without stopping, without anything to eat but raw onions. Catherine did not travel by kibitka, but in love, certainly, she was ready to go from one extreme to another. After Patiomkine, who was a savage, she found charm in Mamonof, whom the Prince de Ligne himself considered well-bred. The sheer brutal passion of the Russian lieutenant gave her a change after the wire-drawn love-making of the Polish diplomatist. ^''''^oltaire, Montesquieu, and Parisian societyi^ .were not, however, forgotten. It is at this time, Mn 1762, that she made friends with the afterwards celebrated and troublesome Princess Dachkof. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Count Roman Vorontsof, brother of the vice- chancellor. The eldest, Marie, had married Count Boutourline. The second, Elizabeth, dreamt of marrying the Grand Duke. She was the favourite. The Empress had jestingly named her Madame de Pompadour, and every one at court called her by this name. The third, Catherine, was fifteen years of age when, in 1758, the Grand Duchess met her in the house of Count Michael Vorontsof, her uncle. She did not know a word of Russian, spoke only French, and had read all the books in that language that she could meet with in St. Peters- burg. Catherine was immensely taken with her. Having married Prince Dachkof shortly after, she followed him to Moscow, and Catherine lost sight of her for two years. In 1761 she returned to St. Petersburg, and passed the summer of ISO CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA that year in a datcha belonging to her uncle Vorontsof, situated midway between Peterhof, where the Empress was residing, and Oranien- baum, the usual residence of the Grand Duke and Duchess during the hot weather. Every Sunday Catherine went over to Peterhof to see her son, whom the Empress would not give u^. On the way back she would stop at the Voront- sof datcha, and carry off her young friend for the rest of the day. They discussed philosophy, history, and literature, and the gravest scientific and social problems. Perhaps they sometimes chanced upon gayer subjects ; but with these two young women, one of whom was scarcely thirty, and the other not yet twenty, gaiety was a rare visitor. The Grand Duchess had grave cares at the time, and the Princess Dachkof was always a very serious person. Later on, her society became less agreeable to Catherine, and ended by becoming absolutely insupportable. But just then the future Semiramis was very glad to find some one with whom she could talk of s, things of which Orlof understood nothing,^_^t pleased her, also, tTfind in the mind of a Russian some glimmer, however pale, of that Western culture for which she dreamt of making a home in the heart of this immense and barbarous empire. This little person of seventeen, who had read Voltaire, was a fine opportunity ; the firstfruits of the propaganda that she wished to accomplish. And then she was a Russian grande dame, connected by birth and by marriage with two influential families. This too had _ its inally, beneath the varnish of an ar to her own, as heterogeneous V , importance, ~^'^educatioh sirhil; THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE iSi and as incomplete, beneath the odds and ends of ideas and the scraps of learning picked up here and there at the chance of hurried reading, Catherine discovered in her friend an ardent and fiery soul, equipped for all hazards. The demon of madness, which shook the athletic frame of her new lover, dwelt also in this frail child. They went hand in hand until the day when the destiny of one of them was decided. Neither the acquisition of Orlof nor of this new friend, however, made up for the loss of Bestoujef. The statesman trained in affairs, the man of experience and of wise counsel, called for a successor. A successor was found, Panine. Panine was the political scholar of the ex-chan- cellor. Ten years before, Bestoujef had thought of him as a possible favourite for Elizabeth. Panine was then a handsome young man of twenty-nine, and for some time the Czarina looked upon him with anything but an indifferent eye. The Chouvalofs, who considered the place in question as a sort of patrimony, and who were in league with the Vorontsofs against the supremacy of Bestoujef, got him out of the way. He was sent to Copenhagen, then to Stockholm, where he played a somewhat important part in the struggle against French influence. The change of system, which placed Russia and France side by side in the same camp, neces- sitated his recall in 17^0. Elizabeth thought of him for the post of tutor to the Grand Duke Paul, which had become vacant on the resig- nation of Behtieief. The Chouvalofs did not oppose the choice. After Alexander Chouvalof, after Peter Chouvalof his brother, it was now 152 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA Ivan Chouvalof, a cousin, who held the other post, which alone was of consequence. Himself but thirty, he did not fear the competition of Panine, who had aged. Cold, methodical, with a certain nonchalance which became more and more marked, Panine was just the man to act as counterpoise to the stormy temperaments of which Catherine formed the centre. His political ideas drew him natur- ally to the side of the Grand Duchess, while they drew him away from the Prussian tendencies of the Grand Duke. Like Bestoujef, he remained Austrian in his sympathies. The strange temper of Peter somewhat terrified him, the more so as he had cause to suffer from it himself There were discussions, naturally, concerning the event, which seemed to draw nearer and nearer, and which began to occupy all minds, from end to end of Europe. Elizabeth was dying, and her death would be, not only at St. Petersburg, the signal of a political crisis of incalculable import- ance. A irTfieTn tereSts concerned in the strife of parties between the great continental powers depended on this near eventuality. After the taking of Colberg (December 1761), a few months more allowed for the combined action of the Russian and Austrian troops, it was the certain, the inevitable, ruin of Frederick. The vanquished of Gross- J aegersdorf and of Kunersdorf had no illusions himself on the point. But it could be equally well predicted that the accession of Peter HI. would bring to an end the common campaign against the King of Prussia. Panine considered the problem, and seemed inclined to solve it, if not absolutely in favour 153 / I- 'I HE EIGHT FOR THE THRONE of Catherine’s secret ambitions, at least in such a manner as to protect her interests against the hostile intrigues about the bed of the dying Czarina. According to an apparently serious authority, the Vorontsofs had nothing less in view than to procure the divorce of Catherine, and to proclaim the illegitimate birth of the little Paul. After which the heir of Elizabeth would marry the Freiline Vorontsof. Happily for Catherine, this too ambitious way of arranging things awoke the rival susceptibilities of the Chouvalofs, who, as a counterblast to the project, went to the extent of plotting that Peter should be sent into Germany, and the little Paul inw _ mediately raised to the throne, with Catherine as his guardian. Between these two opposeST” camps, Panine adopted a middle plan, declaring himself in favour of letting things follow their natural course, save that a salutary influence in the future government of Elizabeth’s nephew should be reserved for Catherine, and, through her, for himself. Catherine listened, and said -y, nothing. She had her own ideas. She also talked over things with the Orlofs. II P Elizabeth died on the 5th of January 1762, without having made any change in her instruc- tions for the succession of Peter. Had she ever had the intention of changing them ? The matter is uncertain. ‘The wish and expectation of all,’ wrote the Baron de Breteuil in October 1 760, ‘ is that she II 154 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA will establish on the throne the littife Grand Duke, to whom she seems passionately attached.’ A month later, he recounted the following : — ‘ The Grand Duke had gone for a couple of days into the country for hunt’v g, and that very day the Empress suddenly ordered that a Russian piece should be played at her theatre, and, con- trary to usage, did not invite the foreign ministers and the other persons at the court who were generally presen'; f so that she went to the play with only the few people who were in immediate attendance on her. The little Duke accompanied her, and the Grand Duchess, having alone been invited, was also present. Scarcely had the per- formance begun when the Empress complained of the small number of spectators, and she com- manded that all her guard should be admitted. The hall was soon filled with soldiers. Then, according to all reports, the Empress took the little Grand Duke on her knees, caressed him in the most marked manner, and, addressing some of these old grenadiers, to whom she owes all her grandeur, she presented the child to them, so to speak, spoke to them of his good qualities and his charms, and seemed to take pleasure in receiving their military compliments. These performances went on almost all through the play, and the Grand Duchess seemed well pleased.’ If we may believe the authority that we have cited above, Panine, while seeming to make common cause with the Chouvalofs, must have played them false at the last moment : a monk had been brought by him to the bedside of Elizabeth, who had induced her to make her peace with Peter. It is more probable that THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 155 Elizabeth could not make up her mind, or not in time. She had come to detest her nephew, but she loved her peace of mind above all. Her death, which had been expected for years, left room for the hypothesis of a revolution which would supply the place of her will, weakened as it was by debauch. The Baron de Breteuil wrote : — ‘ When I look at the hate of the nation for the Grand Duke, and the errors of this prince, I am tempted to imagine an entire revolution ; but when I observe the base and pusillanimous air of those who are on the point of raising the mask, I see fear and servile obedience come into play with the same tranquillity as at the Empress’s usurpation.’ This is precisely what happened. If we may believe Williams, Catherine had planned five years before the part that she was to play by the dying bed of Elizabeth. ‘ I shall go straight,’ she said, ‘ to the room of my son ; if I meet Alexis Razoumofski 1 will leave him with my little Paul ; if not, I will take the child into my own room. At the same time I shall send a trusty messenger to summon five officers of the Guard, each of whom will bring fifty soldiers, and I shall send for Bestoujef, Apraksyne, and Eleven. I shall go into the death-chamber, where I shall receive the oath of the captain of the Guard, and I shall take him with me. If I see the least hesitation, I shall lay hands on the Chouvalofs.’ She added that she had already had an interview with the hetman Cyril Razoumofski, and that he answered for his regiment, and engaged to CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 156 bring with him the Senator Boutourline, Trou- betzkoi, and even the vice-chancellor Vorontsof. She even wrote to Williams : ‘ The Czar Ivan the Terrible proposed to fly to England; for my part I shall not seek refuge with your king, for I am resolved to reign or to perish.’ Is Williams to be believed ? According to the Abbe Chappe d’Auteroche, it was a quite different scene that took place at the moment of the Empress’s death. The French historian represents her throwing herself at her husband’s feet, and declaring her wish to serve him ‘ as the first slave of his empire.’ Later on, Catherine was greatly offended by this account of things, denying it on oath with a singular vehemence. We may be excused from pro- nouncing an opinion. At all events Peter took possession of his /empire quite peaceably. His reign began just ^ f as it had been anticipated on all hands. Frederick breathed freely again, and might well feel himself saved by the death of Eliza- beth. On the very night of his accession to the throne, Peter sent couriers to the different corps of his army, with orders to suspend hostilities. The troops occupying East Prussia were to stay their march. Those acting in concert with the Austrians were to separate from them. They were all to accept an armistice if the proposition were made to them by the Prussian generals. At the same time the Emperor despatched the chamberlain Goudo- vitch to Frederick himself with a letter from his hand giving expression to his friendly inten- tions. Then followed rapidly public resolutions THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 157 and demonstrations announcing a radical change of tendencies and sympathies. Even the French players were dismissed without the smallest ^consideration. Lastly, in February a declaration addressed to the representatives of France, fcpain, and Austria, informed them of what ^ey had to expect under the new rule : Peter turned round upon his allies without ceremony, told them that he had decided to mal^ peace, and advised them to do the same. scene, picturesquely recounted by the Baron de Breteuil, emphasised, two days after, the last part of this declaration. It was on the 25th of February 1762, at a supper-party given by the chancellor Vorontsof. It lasted from ten in the evening till two in the morning. The Czar, says de Breteuil, ‘ never ceased all the time to bawl, and drink, and talk nonsense.’ Towards the end Peter rose, staggering, and turning towards General Werner and Count Hordt, drank a toast to the King of Prussia. ‘ Things are different now from what they have been for years past/ he said, ‘ and we shall see, we shall see ! ’ At the same time he threw confidential smiles and looks at Keith, the English ambassador, whom he called ‘ his dear friend.’ At two o’clock in the morning the company passed into the salon. Instead of the usual faro-table there was a great table covered with pipes and tobacco. To pay court to the Emperor, one was obliged to smoke a pipe for hours together, and drink English beer and punch. However, after a long talk with Keith, his Majesty proposed to play at campi. During the game, he calls over the Baron de Posse, the Swedish minister, and tries IS8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA to convince him that the declaration recently issued by Sweden is exactly the same as his own. ‘It is only intended,’ explains Posse, ‘ to call the attention of the allies to the diffi- culties which would be incurred by a prolonga- tion of the war.’ ‘ We must make peace,’ declares the Emperor. ‘ For my part, I will have it’ The game continues. The Baron de Breteuil loses a few ducats to Prince George of Holstein, the uncle of the Czar, whom he had once encountered, in the course of his military career, on a German battle-field. ‘Your old antagonist has got the better of you ! ’ cries Peter, laughing. He continues to laugh and repeat the word, like a drunken man. The Baron de Breteuil, a little taken aback, ex- presses his assurance that neither he nor France will ever have the Prince as adversary again. The Czar makes no reply, but a little while after, seeing Count Almodovar, the Spanish minister, lose in turn, he whispers in the ear of the French envoy, ‘ Spain will lose.’ And he laughs once more. The Baron de Breteuil, choking with rage, endeavours to preserve a cool demeanour, and replies in his most dignified manner, ‘ I think not, sire.’ Upon which he proceeds to point out what might be done with the forces of Spain joined to those of France. The Emperor only replies with mocking ‘ ha- ha’s.’ At last the French diplomatist sums up the matter ; ‘ If your Majesty Remains stead-^ fast in your alliance, as you have promised and as you are bound to do, both Spain and France are in the best of cases.’ This time Peter can contain himself no longer. THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 159 He roars out in a rage : ‘ I told you two days ago : I will have peace.’ ‘ And we too, sire ; but we would have it, as your Majesty would also, honourably, and in agreement with our allies.’ ‘Just as you please. For my part, I will have peace. After that, you can do as you like. Finis coronat opus. I am a soldier, and I don’t joke.’ Upon which he turns on his heel. ‘ Sire,’ replies the Baron de Breteuil gravely, ‘ I will report to the K ing the declaration that your Majesty is pleased to make to me.’ It is the final rupture. The Chancellor Vorontsof, who is immediately informed of the incident, attributes the fault to his master’s drunken condition and his peculiar temper. He offers his excuses. But neither at St. Petersburg nor at Versailles is there any uncertainty as to the bearing of the Emperor’s words. ‘You will have imagined my indignation,’ writes the Duke de Choiseul, ‘on hearing of what took place on the 25th of February. I confess I did not expect treatment of this kind, for France is not yet accustomed to having its laws dictated to it by Russia. I do not believe M. Vorontsof can give you any further explana- tions. It is useless to demand them. We know all there is to know, and the final information that we shall get will be the news of a treaty made between Russia and our enemies.' — ^ As a matter of fact that is exactly what hap- pened two months later. On April 24th Peter i signed a treaty of peace with Prussia, in which ^ylie inserted a paragraph announcing the speedy Aconclusion of a defensive and offensive alliance ' \ i6o CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA between the two powers. He announces publicly his intention of putting himself, with a body of troops, at the disposition and under the orders of Frederick. It is a project that he has long had in view. In May 1759 the Marquis de I’Hopital notified to his cabinet : — ‘ The Grand Duke, finding himself alone with Count Schwerin and Prince Czartoryski, began to praise the King of Prussia, and said in so many words to Count Schwerin that he would think it an honour and glory to make a cam- paign under the command of the King of Prussia.’ At the same tirhe Peter seemed desirous of seeking a quarrel with Denmark, on account of its German possessions. The Emperor of Russia was ready to stoop to avenge the injuries, real or imaginary, of the Duke of Holstein. A Russian historian has written a book to explain ‘the political system,’ as he is pleased to call it, of Elizabeth’s successor. In his opinion the whole future of Russia would have been at stake if this ‘system’ had had its way. It seems to us that this is too much honour to Peter HI. and his policy. Did he really dream of ‘ sacrificing the mouth of the Dvina, and cutting himself off from some millions of compatriots, in order that, with the aid of Prussia, he might lay hold of another shore, some hundreds of versts away, seize on the mouth of the Elbe, and extend his dominion over a few thousands of Dano-Germans ? ’ We are inclined to think that he simply wished to express his admiration for Frederick, and astonish the Germans with his general’s uniform. He continued to play at soldiers ; only, having the THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE i6i choice before him, he was no longer content with foot-soldiers in paste. In the interior he proclaimed himself an earnest reformer. Ukase followed ukase, one decreeing the secularisation of the estates of the clergy, another the emancipation of the nobility, another the suppression of the ‘ secret chancellor- ship,’ or political police organisation. What are we to think of this precipitate legislation ? Was ^ Peter really and truly a liberal ? A contemporary, Prince Michael Chtcherbatof, explained after his own fashion the ukase on the nobility. One evening when he wished to escape the vigilance of his mistress, Peter called aside his secretary of state, Dimitri Volkof, and thus addressed him ; ‘I have told Mile. Vorontsof that I shall spend part of the night working with you on a project of the greatest importance. You must therefore let me have a ukase t o-morrow which will be the talk of the court and the town.’ Volkof bowed ; next day Peter was satisfied, and the nobility as well. It is probable that the new Emperor, while influenced to some extent by his surroundings, and applying, without reflection, the ideas that they gave him, was obedient, in especial, to the instinct of meddling with every- thing which we find in most children, and which in him was increased by his naturally restless spirit. It amused him to overturn the constitu- tion of his empire with a signature, and to see about him the frightened looks of those whom these rapid changes alarmed. They were his little jokes. Perhaps, too, he thought to imitate Frederick. He enjoyed himself vastly, and felt himself in a fair way to make a great sovereign, / ■ i6j CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Was he really in danger of alienating the affection of his subjects, or of shaking the foundations of his throne, by these measures abroad and at home? We cannot believe it. "^His subjects had seen so many contradictory measures ! The clergy was certainly wounded to the quick, but it said nothing. The nobility had had reason to be satisfied, but it too had nothing to say. The senate offered to the Emperor a statue of gold, which he refused. Later on, much was said about the symptoms of disorganisation which had begun to manifest themselves throughout the machinery of government before the event which brought the new reign to an end. Such observations are always made after the event. Meanwhile Peter reigned tranquilly, despite his eccentricities. Biron before him had been more eccentric still. The machinery of government in Russia resembled the massive sledge that had brought Catherine as far as Moscow : it was proof against blows. 4 Peter was guilty of two capital faults — in jmaking one malcontent and in exasperating another. The malcontent was the army. Not that it was so averse as people have imagined to changing sides, and fighting with the Prussians against the Austrians after having fought with the Austrians against the Prussians. The hatred of the peaked helmet, attributed to the soldiers commanded in 1762 by a Tchernichef or a Roumiantsof, seems to us a quite modern in- vention. The peaked helmet did not exist, and, German for German, the warriors of Maria Theresa were no less so than those of Frederick. Peter wished to introduce into his army the THE FIGHT FOR^H^ THRONE 163 Prussian discipline ; it is that which his army could not forgive. It had a discipline of its own. For a slight infraction, one of those grenadiers whom Elizabeth cherished so dearly, and with such good reason, could be sentenced to 3000, 4000, or even 5000 blows of the stick, without protesting against the sentence. If, sometimes, he did protest against this frightful torture, he went back to the ranks without a murmur. But it seemed to him intolerable that he should be made to go all over a manoeuvre again because of a fault in the ensemble. Then Peter spoke of changing the uniforms : that was a second offence. Finally, he spoke of suppressing the Guards, his grandfather had suppressed the Strelitz. This was to lay hands on the Holy of Holies. For nearly half a century the Guards had been the most solid and stable thing in the empire. The new Czar began by dismissing the bodyguards, those whose under-officers the late Empress had invited to dinner. He replaced them by a Hol- stein regiment. Prince George of Holstein was named Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, and placed at the head of the horse-guards, who had always had the sovereign himself as their Colonel. It was too much to be endured. It seems to us that the almost unanimous testimony of contemporaries in regard to the hostile public feeling evoked by the new Emperor refers entirely to these military reforms, and to the effect which they produced in the ranks of the army. We know already what the word ‘ public ’ meant in 7 Russia. The exasperated malcontent was Catherine. In this respect a positive madness seemed to 1 64 //. OF RUSSIA have come over Peter. On January 15, 1762, the Baron de Breteuil wrote to the Due de Choiseul — ‘ The Empress is in the cruellest state and treated with the most marked contempt. I have told you how she endeavoured to fortify herself with philosophy, and how little this food consorts with her disposition. I now know, for certain, that she is already much put out by the way in which the Emperor treats her, and by the airs of Mile, de Vorontsof P should not be surprised, knowing her courage and violence, if this were to drive her to some extremity. I know that some of her friends are doing their best to pacify her, but they would risk everything for her, if she required it.’ ^ In the month of April, when he took up his residence in the new palace which had just been finished, Peter occupied one of the wings, and assigned to his wife apartments at the other extremity. Close to him w as lodged Elizajjetl^ Vorontsof. From a certain point of view tins arrangement was quite agreeable to Catherine ; it gave her more liberty, and she needed it in every way : she was once more enceinte, and, this time, without the slightest possibility of assigning the ; paternity to the Emperor. It was nonetheless , a visible sign of the contemptuous treatment which the Baron de Breteuil speaks of, and the official recognition, so to speak, of a state of things difficult to tolerate. Peter constantly subjected her to the most gross and offensive treatment, the most paltry and cruel bickerings. One day, as he was supping with his mistress, he sent for Count Hordt, who was with the Empress. The Swede, not daring to say to Catherine where / THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE i6s he was wanted, declined the invitation. There- upon Peter arrived himself, announcing brutally to the Count that they were waiting for him at the Vorontsof’s, and that he must make up his mind to come. Another day, having discovered that the Empress was very fond of fruit, he ordered that none should be served at table. From time to time he had fits of jealousy. Catherine, according to the general custom of the time, even among young and pretty women, took snuff. She acquired the habit at an early ^ age, and clung to it all her life. Sergius Galitzifm^ relates that she had to give up snuff-taking, by the Emperor’s command, because she had once asked his (Sergius’s) father for a pinch of snuff. The scene is well known in which the Emperor apostrophised the Empress in public, and flung at her head a gross insult. It was the 21st of June 1762, at a dinner of four hundred people, the dignitaries of the three first orders and the foreign ministers, on the occasion of the ratification of the treaty of peace with Prussia. The Empress was seated in her usual place in the middle of the table. The Emperor, having on his right the Baron von Goltz, was seated at one end. Before drinking the health of Frederick, the Emperor proposed that of the imperial family. Scarcely had the Empress set down her glass, when he sent his aide-de-camp, Goudowitch, to know why she had not risen to do honour to the toast. She replied that as the imperial family consisted only of the Emperor, herself, and her son, she had not thought it necessary. Peter immediately sent back Goudowitch, with orders to tell the Empress that she was a fool [doiira^^y i66 CATHERINE II. OE RUSSIA and that she ought to know that the two Princes of Holstein, his uncles, formed part of the im- perial family. And, fearing no doubt that Goudo- witch would not execute his commission faithfully, he himself shouted ‘ Doura ! ’ across the table, addressing the compliment to the one for whom it was intended. Every one heard the word. Tears started from Catherine’s eyes. These were but insults. Peter had the folly of adding threats. The same day, the Freiline Vorontsof received the order of St. Catherine, which was habitually reserved to princesses of the blood-royal. Catherine herself had only had it after having been officially designated as the fiancde of the future Emperor. It even appears that on leaving the table, drunk as usual, Peter gave the order to Prince Bariatinski to arrest the * Empress, and only the entreaties of Prince George of Holstein persuaded him to revoke his decision. But it was matter of general belief that, urged on by the Vorontsofs, he would pro- ceed to this extremity. Catherine would be shut up in a convent, Paul thrown into prison, and the favourite legally married. She had certainly gained an absolute hold over him. She was just the mistress for this imperial puppet, half _German corporal. She was not pretty ; ‘ ugly, ~?ommon, and stupid,’ says Masson. The Ger- man Scherer, who has only praises for Peter, admits that he gave evidence, in his choice of a companion, of deplorable taste — the only fault, in his eyes, that is to be found in him. She was worthless and without education. ‘ She swore like a trooper, squinted, and spat while talking.’ It seems that she sometimes beat the Emperor, THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 167 but she got drunk with him, which was some compensation. It is reported that at the very moment of the revolution, which hurled down Peter and his mistress, the manifesto destined to remove Catherine from the throne, and to set up the Vorontsof in her place, was made out, and ready to be published to the world. Thus did Catherine find herself face to face with a dilemma, of which both ways indicated a terrible risk to run, with this difference, that there was nothing to gain on one side and not much to lose on the other. She made hej^T choice in consequence. Ill The history of the conspiracy of 1762, which cost the throne and the life of Peter III., has yet to be written, and, up to the present, suffi- ciently authentic and definite documents for the historian are lacking. Rulhiere seems to be utterly mistaken in regard to the part played by Panine and the Princess Dachkof in bringing about this event. According to him they did little or nothing. Nevertheless, according to him, it is the Princess Dachkof who began, by sacrificing her virtue in order to win over Panine, who was himself little disposed to run the risk. It must be added that the scruples of the Princess were owing mainly to her belief that a very near relationship existed between her and the man whose homage she at first repulsed. She thought she was his daughter. An obscure intermediary, the Piedmontese Odard, afterwards secretary to Catherine, persuaded her out of this i68 CATHERINE II. OE RUSSIA notion, and after that the two lovers were soon in agreement. Unhappily they were not from the first in agreement with Catherijie as to the end towards which their efforts were to tend. The Princess’s reading, the residence of Panine at Stockholm, had imbued them both with republican ideas. They would not give the power to Catherine save on certain conditions. Catherine declined any sort of compromise, and, having the Orlofs under her hand, seemed dis- posed to go without the services which were offered her at such a price. They therefore decided to work independently towards the dis- lodgment of Peter, waiting on the event to see how he should be replaced. It was an instance of the ‘parallel action,’ of which recent events ”n^ave given rise to further instances. '^Princess Dachkof and Panine recruited partisans among the high officers of the army, stooping sometimes to the very soldiers. The Orlofs worked among the soldiers, and made several tentatives among the chiefs. Sometimes they met one another in the barracks, and, not being mutually acquainted, looked upon one another with suspicion. At length Catherine succeeded in uniting the two intrigues, and took the direction of the move- ment into her own hands. Such is the account of Rulhiere. Convincing as it has seemed to-day to the most intelligent writers, it is easy to find in it grave objections. The portrait that Diderot, who afterwards knew the Princess Dachkof at Paris, has left of this beauty, is one : — ‘ The Princess is by no means beautiful ; she is small ; her forehead is high and broad, she has THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 169 fat puffy cheeks, eyes neither large nor small, a little deeply set in their sockets, black eyes and eyelashes, a flat nose, a large mouth, thick lips, bad teeth, a round, straight throat of the national shape, the chest convex, no figure, promptitude in her movements, few graces, nothing im- posing.’ She seems, certainly, to have exercised a certain influence, due perhaps to the vivacity of her character, on the indolent spirit of the future minister of Catherine ; that she can have had the power to rid him not only of his indolence, but also of his habitual prudence, to the point of implicating him in an enterprise of which he was well able to appreciate all the danger, seems to us more than doubtful. That on her side Cathe- rine should have put her interests, her destiny and that of her son, her ambition, and her very life, into the hands of this conspiratress of eighteen, is what we find the greatest diffi- ^ culty in admitting as possiblef^ The Princess, too, has told us in her memoirs the manner in which her first advances were received. It was a little before the death of Elizabeth. One winter evening, towards midnight, the Grand Duchess, who had already gone to bed, saw her friend appear, trembling with fright or cold, and entreating her to confide in her, in view of the dangers which surrounded her. She desired to know what was the plan of the future Empress, and what instructions she had to give her. Catherine first of all did her best to keep this intrepid adventuress from catching cold. She made her lie down by her side, covered her up with the bedclothes, and then gently advised her 12 170 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA to return to her own bed and not be frightened. She had no plan, and she put her trust in Providence. In reality no one, among those who were most concerned in foreseeing the great event, had any suspicion of its approach, or saw it coming. Who could pay any attention to the obscure and unmethodical machinations of a few hare-brained creatures ? According to one of the versions that we owe to the Princess Dach- kof, the very conspirators themselves had no better view of things : ‘The affair was well forward before she, or the Empress, or any one at all, was aware of it. Three hours before the V revolution there was not a soul who expected it in less than three years.’ i At all events it seems that, up to the last Vv moment, there was no settled plan, nor even any very definite idea, on the part of any one, as to the course to be followed and the methods to be used in attaining the end in view. How was Peter to be dethroned and Catherine set in his place ? No one knew. *'T\ccording to Odard’s confidences to Bdranger, several attempts were made, without success, to seize the Emperor. As far as one can judge, they went forward at hazard. The Princess Dachkof, so much is probable, spoke to some officers. There was, it is certain, a whole propaganda, a work of cor- rupting and tampering, carried on in the barracks ''Z by the brothers Orlof on a wide scale. Money was not lacking, even before the tentative finally made upon the Baron de Breteuil. At the beginning of March, Gregory Orlof occupied the post of paying officer to the artillery. The THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 171 grand master of artillery, the luckless lover of the Princess Kourakine, had just died, and had been succeeded by a former chamberlain of the young court, who had been removed from his post by Elizabeth on account of his excessive devotion to Catherine — the Frenchman Villebois. Villebois was the son of a page of Peter I., who had afterwards been made vice-admiral. '^It was written that a Frenchman once again should play an important part in the coup dPtat destined to give a new ruler to Russia, and that La Chetardie should have a successor. It is pro- bable, indeed, that the choice of Gregory Orlof was due to the personal intervention of the new grand master, inspired, no doubt, by Catherine herself Nothing seemed to point out the young officer as a suitable person for such a post of confidence. One might as well have put the cash-box on deposit in the cave of Ali-Baba. The second in command under Villebois, Lieu- tenant-General Pournour, made the observation. He was informed that Orlof was protected by the Empress, and he bowed. The paying officer made heavy demands upon the treasury. In this way not less than ninety-nine soldiers in each regiment of the Guard had been gained over — the Ismailofski (the first before which Elizabeth had presented herself on the day of the coup dPtat), the Siemienofski, the Preobra- jenski, and the regiment of horse guards in which served the famous Patiomkine. Catherine was sometimes induced to give direct and personal aid to those who were re- cruiting in her interests. She seems, neverthe- less, to have shown much restraint and discretion 173 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA in the matter. One of the grenadiers won over by Alexis Orlof, the grenadier Strolof, required a sign from the Empress. He was promised that if he would be in the Czarina’s way in the course of her promenade in the park of the imperial palace, he should have this sign : her Majesty would give him her hand to kiss. Catherine lent herself readily to the plan, by which she ran no sort of risk. ‘ Everybody kisses my hand,’ she said, later on, to Chrapo- wicki. But the brave soldier was moved to the depths of his soul. He shed tears as he bent over the imperial hand, and asked no further conviction. _.p^he last to be convinced, in this conspiracy, would seem to have been Catherine herself. In the account that she is supposed to have written of this period of her life, she states that she refused to lend an ear to the proposals that were made to her from the time of Elizabeth’s death, until, after having publicly insulted her, Peter carried his spite and extravagance to the point of wishing to have her arrested. The incident, as we know, happened on the 21st of June, that ^ to say, only a few weeks before the coup d'etat. ^ut even then, and up to the time of the coup d'etat itself, no active part is known to have been taken by the future Empress in the operations of her friends. *^Ier part, up to the last moment, would seem to have been a part of attitude and bearing alone. ^In this respect she was admirable. The art with which she always continued to take the opposite side to her husband, and tone down whatever was offensive in his conduct by some counterpart THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 173 exaggeration of behaviour, places her among the finest political actresses of all tim^ The death of Elizabeth, and the complication of ceremonies which arose from the clashing of the rites of the Greek Church with the court etiquette over the mortal remains of the Empress, provided a fresh occasion for the new Emperor to display the singularity and churlishness of his disposition. He did not fail to take it, showing himself indecorous to excess. Catherine protested, and won the admiration and sympathy of all by her manifestations of respect and filial piety. ‘No one,’ wrote the Baron de Breteuil, ‘has been more assiduous in carrying out the late Empress’s funeral rites, which, according to the Greek Church, are numerous and most super- stitious, and at which she must certainly laugh in her sleeve, but the clergy and the people believe her to be deeply affected, and are highly delighted.’ There is a portrait of her in the morning dress which she always wore at this time. She observed carefully all the religious ceremonies, fasts, jotirs maigres, holidays, everything for which Peter affected the most absolute contempt. At a solemn mass, sung in the chapel of the palace, on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, the Austrian ambassador was amazed to see the Emperor walking unceremoniously about the holy edifice, and talking aloud during the service with the gentlemen and ladies of the court, while the Empress, motionless in her place, appeared buried in her prayersf^ Peter, growing more and more violent as time went on, forgot himself to the extent of inflicting 174 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA manual correction upon the members of his im- mediate retinue, upon high dignitaries, upon his most devoted followers, in public, before the assembled court. Narychkine, Mielgounof, Vol- kof, had in turn to suffer these indignities. “Catherine was sweetness itself. All who came near her united in praise of her affability, her Evenness of temper, her good graces. To the brutalities of the Emperor, of which she was herself one of the victims, she gently opposed the most dignified deportment, well made to inspire sympathy, without allowing sympathy to degenerate into pity and disesteem. At the famous banquet where the Emperor flung at her the word ‘ Fool ! ’ she let some tears be seen, just enough to touch the hearts of those who wit- nessed the painful scene ; then, turning immedi- ately to Count Strogonof, who was standing behind her chair, she begged him to tell her something merry, to make her laugh and dis- tract people’s attention^^ "jTt one moment she carried her science of dissimulation so far as to become amiable and considerate for Peter himself. The diplo- matic correspondence notifies an unexpected re- conciliation of husband and wife. The Empress appeared, smiling and gracious, at the Emperor’s suppers, in the midst of orgies of beer and tobacco. She endured stoically the odour of pipes, the heavy German drunkenness, the low talk of drinkers. It was the critical moment. Catherine, as we have said, was enceinte. She had need to hide the fact from all eyes, and especially from the eyes of the Emperor. There is a story that on the day when she was taken THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 75 •Vi with the pang’s of childbirth, her faithful valet de chambre, Chkourine, set fire to a house be- longing to him in one of the suburbs of the city, in order to attract the curious in that direction. Peter ran off there, naturally, to enjoy the sight, and distribute insults and blows of his cane. His favourites followed. Catherine gave birth, on the 23rd April, to a son, who took the name of ^obrinski, and became the founder of one of ilthe most important families in Russia. We shall meet him again later on. It was at this time that, a courtier complimenting the Empress on looking so well, and bringing such a ray of beauty into the company, she could not resist saying: ‘You have no idea how much it some- times costs me to look well.’ But where was all this to lead ? She little knew, in all probability. A day would come, no doubt, when the subterranean labour of her friends would come to the light of day, bringing with it an explosion ; when the extravagances of her husband would come to a crisis : then it would be time for her to act. Then she would act. Meanwhile, as she had said to Princess Dachkof, she put her trust in Providence. According to Frederick, it was the best she could have done. ‘ She could not yet carry anything through,’ he said afterwards, recalling these times ; ‘ she threw herself into the arms of those who were ready to save her.’ That ability in the conduct of affairs, that sureness of vision, that prudence and dexterity needed to pull through an enterprise of this sort, were never specially in her line. *Tt was in her tempera- ment that her true superiority was to be found. 176 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA by that that she really shone. It was on this account that she had always to rely principally, as she did all her life, on that superior and mysterious force that she invoked in speaking to the Princess Dachkof, and whose might Frederick himself did not deny, irreverently calling it ‘His Sacred Majesty Chance.’ To abandon herself to Orlof, as she did now, or to Patiomkine, as she did later, was really, properly speaking, nothing else. Chance brought good luck with Orlof, good luck, and perhaps genius, with Patiomkine, disaster with Zoubof. But Catherine still remained great. For the moment, chance gave her the victory. Chance did not, however, act alone ; but rather with the aid of the man most interested in bringing the enter- prise to nought. ‘He let himself be dethroned V as a child lets himself be sent to bed,’ said V Frederick, speaking of Peter HI. CHAPTER I I I THE VICTORY I Peter left St. Petersburg June 24th for Or- anienbaum. On the 22 nd there was a supper at which 500 guests sat down, and there were fireworks after the supper in honour of the peace with Prussia. On the 23rd the feasUng' "still continued, and it continued afterwards at Or- anienbaum with a smaller number of guests. The THE VICTORY 177 sojourn of the Emperor in his summer residence was to be of short duration. Peter intended shortly to rejoin his army in Pomerania and put to flight the Danes, until he had the chance of making his name glorious on some vaster battle- field, whither his new ally should summon him. He meant to embark at the end of July. The fleet, reduced by sickness, was not really in con- dition to set sail. Peter was not at a loss. He signed a ukase ordering the sick sailors to get well. These warlike projects caused some anxiety to>' his friends, beginning with Frederick himself. His Prussian Majesty’s envoys, the Baron von Goltz and Count Schwerin, had not failed to remonstrate with him on the subject. Was it prudent for the Emperor to leave his capital and his empire before allowing himself time to establish himself upon his throne, before even having been crowned ? Frederick insisted per- sonally on this last point. Before undertaking any enterprise, he should go to Moscow and assume the diadem of the Czar. In a country like Russia this question of form was of immense importance. Peter would listen to nothing. ‘ One is sure of the Russians when one knows . how to take them,’ he said. He imagined that he had this knowledge. He imagined also that he had his eye upon the possible conspirators. The two Orlofs had been pointed out to him. One of their friends. Lieutenant Perfilef, put himself at the disposal of the Czar, and undertook to spy on the five brothers, and play them into his hands. It was he himself who played into their hands. The 178 CATHERINE 11. OE RUSSIA Orlofs were distrustful of him, and at the last -smoment made merry over the confident traitor. On June 29th, Catherine, whom Peter had had"^ the imprudence to leave behind at St. Petersburg, had herself to take up her summer quarters. She received orders to go to Peterhof. At Oranienbaum it was Elizabeth Vorontsof who reigned. Paul remained at St. Petersburg under the care of Panine. Peter nevertheless counted on seeing his wife before setting out on the pro- posed campaign. He had put off the date of his departure in order to celebrate the loth of July (29th June), his feast-day. He meant to cele- brate it at, I’eterhof On the morning of the 9th he set out for the palace, where a grand dinner was to be given in his honour by the Empress on the following day. Peter travelled slowly, taking a large following after him, among which were seventeen ladies. He did not arrive at Peterhof till two o’clock. A surprise was await- ing him ; the chateau was empty. Peter found only a few servants overcome with terror. ‘And the Empress?’ ‘ Gone ! ’ ■* Where ? ’ No one knew, or no one would answer. A peasant approached and handed a paper to the Emperor. It was a letter from Bressan, the former Erench valet of Peter, whom he had appointed to the supervision of the manufacture of Gobelins. Bressan wrote that the Empress had arrived at St. Petersburg that morning, and had been pro- claimed sole and absolute sovereign. Peter could not believe his eyes. He rushed like a madman through the empty rooms, hunted in THE VICTORY »79 every corner, and all through the gardens, calling the Empress again and again. The crowd of frightened courtiers followed him in his useless search. They had at last to give in to the evidence of their own eyes. What had happened.? No one has ever quite known. The uncertainties and contradictionswhich have already embarrassed us in the course of our narrative confront us once more at this juncture. The narrative of Princess Dachkof seems in many respects dubious, and that of Catherine does not bear examination. On the night of the 8th or 9th July Catherine’s friend appears to have been, awakened by one of the Orlofs, with the news of the arrest of one of the conspirators. Captain Passek. It meant the discovery of the plot and the certain ruin of all who had taken part in it. Princess Dachkof did not hesitate. She gave orders to give the immediate alarm to the Ismailofski regiment, that of which they were most certain ; to prepare it to receive the Empress ; and at the same time to send for her to Peterhof. It was done. There was, never- theless, a certain hesitation on the part of the Orlofs. The youngest brother, Theodore, came back a few hours afterwards to submit their objections to the Princess. Was it not too soon to venture on so bold a stroke ? She declared angrily that they had wasted too much time already. He bowed to her will, and all obeyed. That is the friend’s version. Catherine’s is quite different. A few years afterwards she was greatly wroth with Ivan Chouvalof, ‘ the basest and most cowardly of men,’ who has dared to write to Voltaire ‘ that a girl of nineteen had i8o CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA changed the government of Russia.’ Most as- suredly, she declares, the Orlofs had something else to do than to put themselves at the com- mand of a little scatter-brain. To the last moment, on the contrary ‘ she was kept from knowing the most essential part of this affair.’ Everything was done under the ‘ quite personal ’ direction of Catherine, and of Catherine alone, 4 in consequence of plans which had been made and agreed upon ‘ six months before,’ between her and the heads of the conspiracy. Six months before ! Is this really true ? Has not Catherine herself said elsewhere that she paid no heed to the proposals for the dethronement of her hus- band till after she had been publicly insulted by him — that is to say, only three weeks before the 9th of July ? It is all very uncertain. Quarrels between jealous women usually are. Moreover, both may have spoken In good faith, recalling as they did, so long afterwards, memories blurred with mists of emotion, and attributing to themselves an imaginary part in the events that they both imagined they had conducted, and by which they were both most likely conducted themselves. It is probable that the arrest of Passek, due, as it seems, to a mere accident, hastened things on, and decided the conspirators to risk everything in order to save their lives, which they saw to be in danger. It is certain that, on the 9th of July, at five o’clock in the morning, Alexis Orlof pre- sented himself suddenly at Peterhof, and brought the Empress back to St. Petersburg. Catherine was sound asleep — it is she who gives us this detail — when the young officer THE VICTORY i8i entered her room. Nothing had yet been decided on, and she was riot prepared for any- thing. To understand the scene which followed, according to her own story of it, one must have come in contact with primitive natures like that of this Orlof. One meets many like them to-day in Russia. The thought of such folk being utterly without any complication, their expression of this thought is always simple. The art of preparation is unknown to them, and all the fine shades. They say exactly what they have to say, going straight to the point. They say in the same manner and with the same tone the most commonplace or the most startling of things. They speak always in monochord. If the moon were to fall from the sky, a peasant near Moscow would say to you, ‘ The moon has fallen,’ in the same tone as he would tell you that his cow had had a calf. Alexis Orlof simply woke the Empress and said to her: ‘It is time to get up. Every- thing is ready for your proclamation.’ She asked for explanations. He said, ‘ Passek^ is arrested. You must come.’ That was all. She dressed herself hurriedly, without ‘ making a toilette,’ and jumped into the coach that had brought Orlof. One of her women, the Charo- grodskaia, took her place by her side, Orlof mounted in front, the faithful Chkourine behind, and the vehicle set out at headlong speed for St. Petersburg. On the way they met Michel, the French coiffeur of her Majesty, who was as usual on his way to wait upon her. He was taken along. There were nearly 20 miles to cover, and the 1 82 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA horses, which had already done the distance one way, were scarcely able to start on the return journey. No one had thought of or- ganising a relay. This negligence was near costing them dear. Two horses from a passing peasant’s cart perhaps saved Catherine, and won for her a crown. Five versts outside the town they met Gregory Orlof and Prince Bariatinski, in a state of great anxiety ; they changed from the one coach to the other, and arrived at last before the barracks of the Isma'ilofski regiment. ‘Thus,’ writes Rulhiere, ‘to reign despotically over the vastest empire in the world, arrived Catherine, between six and seven in the morn- ing, having set out on the word of a soldier, brought by peasants, conducted by her lover, and accompanied by her lady’s maid and her coiffeur' Only a dozen men were there. In reality, nothing had been seriously prepared, notwith- standing what Alexis Orlof had said. Drums were beaten. Soldiers half dressed and half asleep came tumbling out. They were told to shout ‘ Long live the Empress ! ’ They looked forward to a distribution of vodka, and shouted whatever was told them. Two of them were sent for a priest, whom they brought back between them. The priest also did whatever he was told. He raised the cross, mumbled a form of oath, the soldiers all bowed down : it was done, the Empress was proclaimed. ‘ The throne of Russia is neither hereditary nor elective,’ said the Neapolitan Caraccioli ; ‘it is occupative.' The proclamation made no mention of Paul. It ■ declared Catherine sole and absolute and nn. VICTORY 183 aristocratic sovereign {samodierjsamodierjitsd). This was not at all what Panine had intended. But where was Panine at this hour, and who troubled about Panine ? ‘A pack,’ says Herzen, ‘of oligarchs, strangers, pandours, and minions, brought by night an unknown, a child, a German, raised her to the throne, worshipped her, and distributed kicks and blows in her name to all who had anything to say in objection.’ Of the other regiments of the Guard, one only, the Preobrajenski, made some show of resist- ance. Simon Vorontsof, a brother of the favourite, who commanded a company in it, would not betray a cause which might pass for that of his sister. He was besides, as he proved afterwards, a man of duty and honour. He harangued his men; Major Voie'ikof sup- ported him, and the regiment marched resolutely against the mutineers who followed Catherine. The two little armies met before the church of Our Lady of Kasan. Catherine had on her side the superiority of numbers, but it was only that of a crowd in disorder. The Preobrajenski regiment, on the contrary, marshalled by its officers, and drawn up in rank, presented an imposing front of battle ; it might yet decide the issue of the day. But the fortune of Catherine declared itself. At the moment when loyalists and rebels came to a standstill within a few paces from one another, ready to come to blows, one of the colleagues of Simon Vorontsof, who marched in the ranks, cried suddenly : ‘ Oura ! Long live the Empress ! ’ It was a train of powder. 1 84 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA The whole regiment took up the cry and dis- banded in an instant, the soldiers threw them- selves into the arms of their comrades, and then, falling on their knees, they asked pardon of the Empress for not having greeted her at once, accusing their officers. Voieikof and Vorontsof broke their swords. They were arrested. Catherine afterwards pardoned them, but she never forgot. Vorontsof had to quit the army, where his merits and his brilliant services brought him nothing but vexation. Appointed ambassador at London, he lived in a sort of honourable exile. Every one now crowded into the church of Our Lady of Kasan, where Catherine betook herself to receive the oaths of fidelity of her new subjects. Panine soon made his appear- ance. It is said that in the coach with him was the little Paul, in his nightcap. The child may thus have been present at his own down- fall, for it was really his downfall, at least pro- visionally, which was being consummated. After the revered temple it was the Winter Palace, the scene of so many of Catherine’s past humiliations, that saw her surrounded with a crowd, hasten- ing to do homage. The senate and the synod came forward among the rest. These two great bodies had already made it their habit to march behind the regiments of the Guard. Another personage came on the scene whom Catherine had not at all expected to see — the chancellor Vorontsof. He was still unconscious of what was going forward, and naively demanded of the Empress why she had left Peterhof. For answer, she made sign that he was to be THE VICTORY 185 brought along. He was told to go into the church and take the oath. He went there. Lastly, elbowing her way through the crowd, all out of breath, agitated, and somewhat dis- appointed, arrived the pretended organiser of all this triumph — the Princess Dachkof. Her coach had not been' able to get as far as the steps of the palace, but, according to her account, the heroes of the day, the officers and soldiers who surrounded the entrance, raised her on their shoulders and brought her in. Her dress and her coiffure had to suffer, but her self-esteem found a compensation for the mortifications which were soon to begin for her. For her interview with the Empress was briefer and less solemn than she had hoped for. It was not the hour for tender effusions, nor for grand ceremonies. There was serious business to be done. First of all, a serious form had to be given to what had just been improvised in a burst of youthful energy and victorious boldness. A manifesto was neces- sary. It was an obscure employ^ from the chancellor’s office, Tieplof, who was appointed to draw it up. Why not Panine ? There are various stories current on this subject. Did the tutor of the little Paul actually think it apropos, even at this moment, and had he the courage, to stand up for his favourite idea and his pupil ? According to one version, the officers of the Ismailofski regiment were opposed to the signa- ture of a reversal, binding Catherine not to reign after the end of Paul’s minority. According to another version, the reversal dictated by Panine, and imposed by him upon the Empress, had been signed and deposited in the archives of the 13 i86 CATHERINE IT. OF RUSSIA Senate, but the Orlofs, by one account, the chancellor Vorontsof, by another, had afterwards withdrawn the document and handed it over to CSitherine, The story is very improbable. Panine was not the man to believe in com- promises of this kind, and to delude himself as to the worth of such a guarantee. He knew the history of his country. The Empress Anne had risen to the throne under the security of a veritable constitutional charter. Six weeks after- wards nothing more was heard of it. The future minister might have had other reasons for not taking part in the drawing up of the manifesto. ^ What Tieplof wrote was sent to press and read to the people, who cried, ‘ Long live the Empress ! ’ as they had heard the soldiers cry. Catherine reviewed the troops, who hailed her once again ; and the new reign had been estab- •^lished: not a drop of blood had been shed. There were a few isolated scenes of disorder. The house of Prince George of Holstein was attacked and pillaged, and he and his wife were somewhat roughly handled, the rings of the Princess being torn off by the soldiers. Some shops were broken into, and the soldiers de- manded wine. One wine-merchant lost 4000 roubles’ worth. The indemnities claimed by the victims of these excesses amounted to 24,000 roubles, not a very serious amount. When the evening was come, and the intoxication of the moment had worn off, and Catherine and her companions, once more in the Winter Palace, proceeded to review the situation, a certain anxiety began to be felt. If, from one point of view, everything in regard to the establishment THE VICTORY 187 of the throne had been done, from another, every- thing had yet to be done. All would count for nothing if Peter were to make a resistance. Was it within his power to do so ? The answer left no room for doubt, and perhaps Panine was just then considering it. Peter had with him about 1500 Holsteiners, an excellent body of men, and ready, according to all appearance, to fight for him to the last, especially as they would be fighting for themselves at the same time. At the head of this little army was the first soldier of Russia, and one of the first of the epoch — Field-Marshal Munich. Recalled by the new Emperor from Siberia, he would never desert his benefactor. Now Catherine herself had at her command only the four regiments that had proclaimed her. The main body of the Russian force was in Pomerania, as yet belonging to no one, or rather belonging to the Emperor, and at his command. If Peter made a resistance, if he gained time, if he made the most of the name and fame of his victorious marshal, would not this Pomeranian army obey his orders, and come to the rescue ? He was the Emperor, and he was about to open a new campaign, a prospect generally agreeable to the soldier, especially after a series of brilliant successes. Up to the present he had only given offence to the Guards, of whose privileges all the rest of the army was jealous. The Orlofs, on their side, had not used their influence beyond this point. The problem was formidable. But where was the Emperor at this moment, and what was he thinking about and doing? i88 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA "i- II After having satisfied himself that the Empress was not where he had expected to find her, Peter could not at once admit the truth, or grasp the whole extent, of his misfortune. The man in > whom he placed his confidence, Perfilef, had not forewarned him. The hapless Perfilef had pass^ the night playing at cards with Gregory Orlof^, thinking to have him thus under his eye. Peter resolved to send for information. He had plenty of people about him. The chancellor Vorontsof, Prince Troubetzkoi, Alexander Chouvalof, offered to go to St. Petersburg. None of them returned. But a Holsteiner, returning from the town, where he had been spending a twenty-four hours’ leave of absence, confirmed the bad news. It was now three o’clock. Peter made another resolution : he summoned Volkof, and ordered him to draw up several manifestoes, by way of beginning a campaign on paper. Nevertheless, on the advice of Munich, he decided to send one of his aides- de-camp, Count Devierre, to Kronstadt, in order to make sure of this important position. An hour afterwards, he remembered that he was a soldier, put on his field-day uniform, and sent for the Holstein troops that had remained behind at Oranienbaum. His intention was to fortify him- self at ^Peterhof, and hold his own against the insurrection. The Holsteiners arrived at eight, but Peter had changed his mind. Munich could not answer for putting Peterhof in condition to stand a siege. He would have preferred to go to Kronstadt instead of sending there. He had THE VICTORY 189 his plan. Suddenly Peter wheeled round, and agreed with his field-marshal. But by this time it was night. They set out, nevertheless ; but, one would have thought, on a pleasure-party. A yacht and a galley with oars took on board the Emperor’s cortege, masculine and feminine. They arrived in sight of Kronstadt at one o’clock in the morning. ‘ Who goes there t ’ cried a sentinel from the top of the ramparts. ‘The Emperor.’ ‘ There is no Emperor. Keep off!’ Count Devierre had been outstripped by an envoy of Catherine, Admiral Talitsine. Munich was not yet disheartened. He and Goudowitch entreated Peter to disembark in spite of all. They would never dare fire upon them ; of that they were certain. But Peter was. down in the hold, trembling in every limb. He had only had to do with cardboard fortresses. The women uttered piercing shrieks. The vessels were turned about. Then Munich proposed another plan : to go on to the port of Reval, embark on a warship, and make their way to Pomerania, where Peter could take command of his army. ‘ Do this, sire,’ said the old warrior, ‘and six weeks afterwards St. Petersburg and Russia will again be at your feet. I answer for it with my head.’ But Peter had exhausted his whole stock of energy. He thought only of getting back to Oranienbaum, and entering into negotiations. , They returned to Oranienbaum. There too ^ they met with unexpected news. The Empress 190 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA had left for St. Petersburg at the head of her four regiments, and was marching upon Peter and his Holsteiners. It was a triumphal march. Catherine led the troops on horseback wearing the uniform of the grenadiers of the Preobrajenski regiment. A crown of oak-leaves adorned her cap, with its sable fur, and her long hair floated in the wind. By her side, dressed in the same uniform, gal- loped Princess Dachkof The soldiers were in ecstasies. They had unanimously thrown aside the uniforms into which they had been put by Peter, tearing them to pieces or selling them to the second-hand dealers ; and they had returned to their old garb, which Peter I. had imported from Germany, but which passed already as national. They burned to measure arms with the Holsteiners. They had not this satisfaction. After a night’s march, at five o’clock in the morning, a messen- ger bearing a flag of truce arrived from Peter. It was Prince Alexander Galitzine. The Emperor offered to divide the power with the Empress. Catherine disdained to answer. An hour after- ]lvard, she received the ' of abdication of ,iier husband. She b eu at Peterhof, whither Peter was brought. 'L,aine, who had been de- puted to notify to him the final orders of the Czarina, found him in the most pitiful state. Peter endeavoured to kiss his hand, entreating not to be separated from his mistr ess. . He cried like a whipt child. The favourite crawled to the knees of Catherine’s envoy ; she too begged to be allowed to stay by her lover. They were separated none the less. Mile. V orontsof w as THE VICTORY 191 sent to Moscow. Peter was sent provisionally’ to a house situated at Ropcha, ‘ a very lonely but a very agreeable spot,’ Catherine declares, nearly twenty miles from Peterhof, where he was to remain until suitable accommodation had been found for him in the fortress of Schlusselburg, the Russian Bastille. On the following day, July 14, Catherine made a solemn entry into St. Petersburg. She had only remained a few hours at Peterhof. Some- thing, however, had happened, besides the down- fall of Peter. Princess Dachkof had made a discovery, of which she speaks sadly enough in her memoirs, and which, by the surprise it caused her, proves that, for an organiser of plots, she was somewhat simple. On entering the Em- press’s salon at the dinner- hour she saw a man stretched at full length on a sofa. It was Gregory Orlof. He had before him a heap of sealed papers which he was nonchalantly proceeding to open. ‘ What are you doing ? ’ cried the Princess, recognising, by the aspect familiar to her in her uncle’s house, documents belonging to the chan- cellor’s office. ‘ No one has a right to touch them, except the , itipxess and those whom she specially appoints. ' ‘ Exactly,’ replied Qrl-ii, without changing his position, and with the same air of disdainful indifference. ‘ She told me to look through this.’ He seemed very much bored by his task, and resolved to get it over as quickly as possible. The Princess was thunderstruck. • Her aston- ishment was not at an end. Three covers were laid on a table at the other end of the room. The Empress, arriving immediately, asked her 192 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA ■friend to seat herself beside her. The third place was for the young lieutenant. But he made no move. The Empress then had the table moved over by the divan. She and the Princess sat down opposite to the young man, who still lay at full length on the sofa. He was, it appeared, wounded in the leg. Thus was disclosed the situation which he was to occupy in connection with the new sovereign. It was the inauguration of favouritism. Ill Some further ordeals still awaited Catherine at St. Petersburg. The very night after her return, there was a great noise outside the palace. The soldiers of the Ismailofski regiment had left their barracks, and demanded to see the Empress, to assure themselves that she had not been carried off. She had to get up from bed, and once again put on her grenadier’s uniform, in order to reassure them. ‘ I cannot and would not,’ she writes some months later to Poniatowski, ‘ tell you all the obstacles there are to your coming here. . . My situation is such that I have to be exii iy careful, and the least soldier of the Guard who sees me says to himself : “ See the work of my hands.” 1 am frightened to death at the letters you write me.’ She held her own aduiirably, however, with the difficulties and dangers of the situation. Neither in the preparation nor the execution of the coup diMat had she shown very great forethought or capacity, qualities, certainly, de- THE VICTORY m sirable in a leader ; but she had shown courage, cooljiess, resoluteness, and especially the art of doing things with effect. These means of action she still employed. All the eye-witnesses of the events which were then taking place at St. Petersburg are unanimous in praise of her calm- ness, her affable and yet imposing air, and the smiling majesty of her mien and bearing. She was already showing herself ‘ imperturbable.’ She did not neglect, either, the means she had long ago chosen for the subjection of wills and the conquest of devotions : she manifested herself from the first as an ostentatious Empress, splen- didly rewarding those who served her, generous to profusion. During the first few months of her reign, it is a veritable Pactolus that streams forth upon those who have wrought for her her fortune. Up to November i6, 1762, the amount of indem- nities paid, apart from payment in kind, in land, and in peasants, comes to 795,622 roubles, or nearly four million francs at the then rate of reckoning. And these sums are for the most part but instalments. Thus Gregory Orlof has received only 5000 roubles out of the 50,000 assigned to him -The resources of the Treasury do not admit of;^ je" at the present. Princess Dachkof figures on tL i list of payments to the amount of 25,000 roubles. A sum of 225,850 roubles has been appropriated to the remittance of a half-year’s pay, by which the st.- ^j of the Guards’ regiments are the gainers. The soldiers are not so well off. They have had plenty to drink on the day of the 12th July. On this head the expense amounts to 41,000 roubles, or more than 200,000 francs. But, not long after the great event, a consider- 194 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA able number of these Praetorians are in want, "^and Catherine does nothing for them. It is true that she is no longer in need of them. The absent are not forgotten. One of Catherine’s first cares was to send an express messenger to the ex-chancellor Bestoujef, an- nouncing her accession to the throne, and invit- ing him to rejoin her in the capital. The bearer of this good news, chosen by Catherine, was a certain Nicholas Ivanovitch Kalyshkine, who, in February 1758, being then a sergeant in a regi- ment of the Guards, had been intrusted with the surveillance of the jeweller Bernard!, implicated in the Bestoujef case, and had aided in the ex- change of correspondence between the Grand Duchess and the prisoners. That, too, Catherine remembered. She was nevertheless raising false hopes in her former associate in politics. Bes- toujef hastened to her at once, and was received with open arms. Catherine was very glad to have at hand a man of his experience and authority. She paraded his name and his past services, and often had recourse to his counsels. But he no doubt anticipated recovering his place as omnipotent minister, Ini* jed an influence even greater than he had had under Elizabeth. In this he was greatly mistaken. '-U xThere were a number of similar dlsappoint- V ments. Field-Marshal Munich, who had has- tened to make his submission, had a very considerable one. Catherine did not appear to cherish any ill-will against him on account of the assistance, useless, it is true, that he had rendered to Peter. He had only done his duty. He said it handsomely enough, and she seemed to lend ear THE VICTORY 195 to it in like manner. But she did with him as she did with Bestoujef. She got rid of him politely. She judged, to use the ^expression of a modern ^^^statesman, that a new situation needed new men. Another to be disenchanted was Princess V Dachkof, She had conceived of the reign of Catherine as a sort of transformation scene, in which she would continue day by day to sway the destinies of the empire, prancing on a noble steed at the head of a column of grenadiers. She had acquired a taste for a uniform, for in- trigue, for parade. She imagined herself to be neither esteemed and rewarded according to her merits, nor utilised according to her capacities. We shall come across her again later on, with her dreams, her pretensions, and all the follies that poisoned her own life, and gave no little trouble to her imperial friend. We shall also come across Bestoujef and Munich. Catherine was very near making another mal- content in the person of an obscure friend, of whom we have already spoken. Princess Dach- kof was not the only one to claim a principal share in the event of the 12th July. Four days after the coup d dtat, i Ceneral Betzky was an- nounced to the Empress. He had been em- ployed in making some distributions of money to the soldiers gained over by the Orlofs. He had received an order and a few thousand roubles. Catherine imagined that he had come to thank her. He fell on his knees, and, in that posi- tion, he entreated the Empress to state before witnesses to whom she owed her crown. ‘To God and to my subjects’ choice.’ said Catherine simply. CATHERINE II. OF RLS^IA 196 On hearing’ these ■words, Betzky rose, and with a tragic gesture took off the ribbon of his order. ‘ What are you doing ? ’ ‘ I am no more worthy to bear these insignia, the reward of my services, since my services are disowned by the Empress. I imagined myself to have been the sole workman of her grandeur. Was it not I who raised the Guards? Was it not I who scattered the gold ? The Empress denies it. I am the most unhappy of men.’ The Empress turned it off with a joke. ‘You gave me the crown, Betzky, I admit. Therefore I would receive it from your hands alone. It is you to whom I confide the care of rendering it as beautiful as possible. I put at your disposal all the jewellers of my empire.’ Betzky took the joke seriously. He looked after the jewellers who had to prepare the crown against the day of coronation, and was satisfied. So, at least, the Princess Dachkof tells the story, in which she may well have put some amount of invention. In general, however, as we have said, Catherine was as generous to her friends as she was mag- nanimous to her enemies. The new reign began well. The enthusiasm with which it had been deceived in the capital found an echo in the remotest provinces. Suddenly a dark cloud came across this radiant dawn. On July^iS, as she was retiring from the senate, where she had read a new manifesto setting forth the description, somewhat coloured, of the means whereby she had risen to the throne, Catherine was about to prepare to appear before the court, when a man THE VICTORY 197 rushed into her dressing-room, covered with sweat and dust, his clothes all in disorder. It I was Alexis Orlof. He had ridden full speed from Ropcha to announce to the Empress the J('ath of Peter III, IV How had this come about? It is still a mystery. More than in any other country in Europe, it yet remains for history in Russia to get at the true sense of the official accounts of great events of state. The walls of palaces built of granite are thick, tongues are silent. Peter had resigned himself to his fate with surprising facility. He had Confined his complaints and demands to three things, that he might have his mistress, his monkey, and his violin. He passed his time in drinking and smoking. On the 1 8th of July he was found dead. That is almost all that we know with certainty. That his death was a violent one is almost certain. At the time no one doubted it. Writing to the Due de Choiseul, the French chargd- d'affaires, Beranger stated that he had by him ‘everything that could justify the generally re- ceived opinion,’ He had not seen the body of the sovereign, exposed in public with the usual ceremony, for the diplomatic corps had not been invited to see it, and Beranger knew that those who found their way there were noted. But he had sent a trustworthy man, whose report went to confirm his suspicions. The body of the unfor- tunate sovereign was quite black, and ‘ extra- vasated blood oozed through the pores, and even igS CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA showed through the gloves which covered the hands.' Those who thought it their duty to kiss the corpse on the mouth, according to the custom of the country, came back with their lips swollen. There is here a certain amount of what is imaginary, though in a diplomatic document. But the fact itself is supported by the strongest presumptions. As for the mode of assassination, since it seems that one must admit the hypothesis, suppositions have varied equally. Some have spoken of poisoning by Burgundy, Peter’s fav- ourite wine, others of strangling. The most part have suggested Alexis Orlof as the author, in- spires or even executor, propria mami, of the deed. One version, however, which is not with- out authority, brings forward quite different data. It sets Orlof completely aside. It is not he but Tieplof who has done, or at least arranged it all. On his injunction, a Swedish officer in the service of Russia, Svanovitz (?), strangled Peter with a musket-strap. The crime took place, not on the i8th, but the 15th, of July. It is not Orlof, it is Prince Bariatinski, who carried the news to St. Petersburg. Orlof or Tieplof, the question may seem of secondary or trifling importance. It is not so. If Tieplof was the instigator of the crime, it is Catherine who was the supreme instigator. For how can we imagine that he would act without her consent ? With Orlof it would be quite different. He and his brother Gregory were then, and were for some time to be, the masters, to a certain point, of the situation that they had brought about, masters also in how they chose to follow up the game in which their lives were at stake. 'Phey THE VICTORY 199 had not consulted Catherine over the coup d'dat-, they may well not have consulted her this time. ‘The Empress was quite ignorant of this crime,’ declared Frederick, twenty years after- wards, talking with the Comte de Segur, ‘and she heard of it with a despair which was not feigned, for she justly foresaw the judgment that everybody passes upon her to-day.’ ‘ Everybody ’ was perhaps too much to say. But the great majority certainly held the opinion which Castera, Masson, Helbig, and others have echoed. In a journal of the period, printed at Leipzig, the death of Peter was compared with that of King Edward of England, murdered in prison by order of his wife Isabella (1327). Later on, there was a certain change of opinion, to which the memoirs of Princess Dachkof con- tributed not a little. On the death of Catherine Paul is said to have discovered in the papers of the Empress a letter of Alexis Orlof, written im- mediately after the event, and referring definitely to him.self as the author of the crime. Bloodthirsti- ness, terror, and remorse all expressed themselves in it. The Emperor lifted his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Thanks be to God!’ But the Princess Dachkof, who relates the scene, did not witness it. Among modern writers there is still some conflict of opinions and conjectures. Catherine herself, it must be confessed, did much to heighten the obscurity of this terrible enigma, by enveloping the event in all the darkness within the power of an absolute sovereign. If she has been wronged, it is perhaps she herself who, to a certain extent, provoked the calumny by proscribing the truth. Her severity in putting down all public discus- 200 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA sion of the tragic incident went to the extent of attacking the work of Rulhiere, who nevertheless has pronounced no opinion on the question of her share in the murder. Despite her science of attitudes, that which she saw fit to assume at the moment of the catastrophe was not perhaps the best calculated to disarm public malignity, though it testified to the strength of her character, and her resources as an actress. In a council hastily summoned, it was decided that the news should be kept secret for twenty-four hours. The Empress thereupon appeared before the court without betraying the slightest trace of emotion. It was only on the following day, a manifesto having brought to the knowledge of the senate the news of the dreadful ending, that Catherine put on the air of one who has but just heard what has happened : she wept copiously before her im- mediate retinue, and did not appear in public. One last word on the subject of this question which can never be fathomed : neither Orlof, nor Tieplof, nor any one, was prosecuted on account of the drama of Ropcha. Does not this throw the responsibility on the sovereign, on whatever hypothesis ? There must have been at all events consent on her part, consent to what had been done, if not to the doing of it. And this leaves one spot of blood on the hands which had just seized the imperi^il sceptre. Perhaps there were others. But perhaps human greatness cannot reach certain heights without these soils, which y)- bring it down to the common level of humanity, t And Catherine was great. How, by what means, and despite what defects, we shall now endeavour ^ to show. Not having undertaken to write the THE VICTORY 201 history of her life, we shall here quit the narrative, in the course of which we have tried to indicate the origins and beginnings of her strange career. This preliminary investigation has seemed to us necessary for the proper placing and showing up of what is the real object of our study, that is to say, the portrait of a woman and a sovereign who, in both characters, has had few rivals in the history of the world, and the aspect of a reign which has been, up to the present, unequalled in the history of a great nation. We have endeavoured to show how Catherine became what she was ; we shall now endeavour to say what she was. H /, I, PART II THE EMPRESS BOOK I . THE WOMAN CHAPTER I APPEARANCE — CHARACTER — TEMPERAMENT I ‘To tell the truth, I have never fancied myself extremely beautiful, but I had the gift of pleas-^^ ing, and that, I think, was my greatest gift.’ So Catherine herself defines the particular kind of attraction that nature had given her in outward appearance. Thus, having passed all her life in hearing herself compared to all the Cleopatras of history, she did not admit the justice of the comparison. Not that she underrated its worth. ‘ Believe me,’ she wrote to Grimm, ‘ there can never be too much of beauty, and I have always placed a very high estimation on it, though I have never been very beautiful.’ Did she deliberately depreciate her charms, through a modest ignorance or an artifice of refined coquetry ? One is tempted to believe it, on hearing the almost unanimous opinion of her contemporaries. Tlie_^Semiramis of the North’ flashed across the latter half of the eighteenth century, and over the very threshold of the nineteenth, as a marvellous incarnation, not only 205 2o6 CAT/IERINE IL OF RUSSIA of power, grandeur, and triumphant success, but / also of adorable and adored femininity. In the / eyes of all, or of nearly all, she was not only imposing, majestic, terrible, but also sedu cti ve, beautiful among the beautiful, queen by right jaf '“beauty as by right of genius, Pallas and Venus Victrix. Well, it seems that her contemporaries saw the marvellous Czarina in a sort of mirage. The illusion was so complete that it extended to the most apparent and the most insignificant details. Thus, the greater part of those who came into her presence speak of her lofty stature, by which she dominated a crowd. Now, as a matter of fact, she was under the middle height, short almost, with a precocious tendency to grow stout. The very colour of her eyes has given rise to absurd contradictions. Some found them brown, others blue, and Rulhiere has tried to harmonise both accounts by making them brown with a shade of blue in some lights. Here is his whole portrait — a portrait which belongs to the period a little before Catherine’s accession to the throne, at the age of thirty-seven. No portrait of an earlier date has come down to us with anything like so much detail : Poniatowski’s is only four or five years earlier in date, and is a lover’s portrait. > ‘Her figure,’ writes Rulhiere, *is noble and agreeable, her bearing proud ; her person and her demeanour full of grace. Her air is that of a sovereign. All her features indicate character. Her neck is long, her head stands out well ; the union of these tv'o parts is of remarkable beauty, alike in the profile and in the niovements of t’ne . ^...^ANCE-CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 207 head ; and she is not unmindful of her beauty in this respect. Her forehead is large and open, her nose almost aquiline ; her mouth is fresh, and embellished by her teeth ; her chin a little large, and inclined to fleshiness. Her hair is chestnut in colour, and of the greatest beauty ; her eyebrows brown, her eyes brown and ‘very Jbeautiful — in certain lights there seem to be shades of blue ; and her skin is of dazzling whiteness. Pride is the main characteristic of her phys iog nomy. The amiability and good- nature whicn are also to be seen there seem, to a penetrating eye, merely the effect of an extreme desire to make a pleasing impression,’ ■ ^Rulhiere is neither a lover nor an enthusiast. Compare, however, with this sketch the sketch done in pencil about this time by a Russian artist, Tchemessof. There is a story that this portrait was made at the desire of Patiomkine, whom Catherine began to favour just after, or perhaps just before, the revolution of July. Catherine was very pleased with it, and took the artist into her service as secretary to her cabinet. And yet what an Empress this Tchemessof shows us, and how unlike all that we see of other painters, sculptors, and memoir-writers, from Benner to Lampi, from Rulhiere to the Prince de Ligne ! The face is agreeable indeed, if you will, and intelligent, but so little ideal, but — dare one say it ? — so common. The cos- tume perhaps has something to do wi.^h this, a strange mourning attire with the hair oddly dressed, covering the forehead down to the eye- brows, and overtopping the head with a pair of bats’-wings. Bjat the hard, smiling face, the jo8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA heavy, half-masculine features, stand out with a brutal frankness. You would say a German yivandiere turned into a nun. Qeopatra,, neyer ! Was Tchemessof a deceiver, and did Catherine, in seeing- herself in the portrait, merely show that total ignorance of art which she afterwards confessed with such candour to Falconet.^ It may be, to a certain point. We have neverthe- less a sort of duplicate of the Russian artist’s sketch in a written portrait done some years later by Richardson, who seems to have had a mind and eyes of his own, not to be taken in by any kind of illusion. This is how he notes his impressions : — ‘The Empress of Russia is under the middle height, graceful and well-proportioned, but in- clining to be stout. She has a good colour, and nevertheless endeavours to improve it with rouge, after the manner of all the women of this country. Her mouth is well-shaped, with good teeth ; her blue eyes have a scrutinising expres- sion — something not so pronounced as an in- quisitive look, nor so ugly as a defiant look. The features are in general regular and agree- able. The general effect is such, that one would do an injustice in attributing to it a masculine air, and something less than justice in calling it entirely feminine/ This is not exactly in the tone of the naif Nivdi all but gross realism of Tchemessof. A common trait, however, appears in both, and it is what would seem to have been the dominant trait of the model, and, from the point of view of plastic beauty, to have considerably diminished, if not destroyed, its charm : that mannish expression, APPEARANCE— CHARACTER-TEMPERAMENT 209 namely, which is emphasised in both, and which \}^e find, through all the magic of colours, in the work of even the least conscientious of artists. The portrait that was the delight of Voltaire, and is still to be seen at Ferney — even that betrays something of it. , Catherine was nevertheless observant in the matter, and down to the very last. A wrinkle that she discovered near the root of the nose in the portrait painted by Lampi, not long before her death, seeming to her to give a hard expression to her face, brought both picture and painter into trouble. Lampi nevertheless, and quite justly, had the reputation of not saying the truth too cruelly to his models. He effaced the wrinkle, and the all but septuagenarian Empress took the air of a young nymph. History does not tell us if she was satisfied this time. ‘ What do you think 1 look like ? ’ asked Catherine of the Prince de Ligne, on his first visit to St. Petersburg ; ‘ long, lanky, eyes like stars, and a big hoop.’ This was in 1780. The Empress was fifty. This is what the Prince de Ligne thought of her : ‘ She still looked well. One saw that she had been beautiful rather than pretty : the majesty of her forehead was tempered by her pleasant eyes and smile, but the forehead was everything. It needed no Lavater to read there, as in a book, genius, justice, courage, depth, equanimity, sweetness, calm, and decision : the breadth o f the forehead indicated memory and imagination ; there was room for everything. Her chin, somewhat pointed, was not absolutely prominent, but it was anything but retiring, and had a certain nobility of aspect The oval. 210 CATHERINE II. OE RUSSIA notwithstanding, was not well designed, though excessively pleasing, for frankness and gaiety dwelt on the lips. Her fine bust had been ac' quired somewhat at the expense of her -waist, once so terribly thin ; but people generally grow "TfaF in Russia. If she had not so tightly drawn back her hair, which should have come down more around her face, she would have looked much better. One never noticed that she was short.’ Again an enthusiast, but the Comte de Segur, who piqued himself on being less so, in his quality of diplomatist, noted at the same time almost identically the same trait.s. ‘The white- ness and brilliance of her complexion,’ he says, ‘were the charms that she kept the longest.’ But Castera explains in his own way her triumph over the ‘irreparable outrage’: ‘In the last years of her reign she used a great deal of rouge.’ It is just this that Catherine would never confess to. We read in one of her letters to Grimm, dated 1783 : — ‘ Thank you for the pots of rouge with which you advise me to brighten my complexion ; but when I tried to use it, I found that it was so crude in colour that it made me look frightful. So you will excuse me if I cannot imitate or adopt this pretty fashion, notwithstanding my great liking for your Paris fashions.’ The most authoritative, the least impressive, testimony, from the plastic point of view, is perhaps that of Mile. Vigee- Lebrun, who, un- fortunately, never saw Catherine in her best days. She had nothing to praise in the conduct of the sovereign, so far a guarantee of her sincerity. /I ^ J uIARANCE—CHARA CTER— TEMPERA MENT 2 1 1 She could not induce the Empress to pose to her. Her brush, later on, did no more than evoke certain recollections. Pen in hand, she retraced them thus : — ‘ I was at first extremely surprised to find that she was short ; I had expected her to be mighty in stature, as high as her renown. She was very stout, but she had still a handsome face, admir- ably framed in by her white hair, raised up on her head. Genius sat on her large high forehead ; her eyes were soft and clear, her nose quite Grecian, her complexion bright, her physiognomy very mobile. ... I said she was short ; yet on her reception days, her head held high, her eagle glance, the composure that comes of the habit of command, all in her had such majesty that she seemed to me the queen of the world. She wore on these occasions the insignia of three orders, and her costume was simple and dignified. It consisted in a tunic of muslin embroidered with gold, the ample sleeves folded across in the Asiatic style. Above this tunic was a dolman of red velvet with very short sleeves. The bonnet that framed in her white hair was not decked with ribbons, but with diamonds of the greatest beauty.’ Catherine had early adopted the habit of holding her head very high in public, and she kept it all her life. Aided by her prestige, this gave her an effect of height that deceived even observers like Richardson. The art of mise en scene, in which she was incomparable, has re- mained a tradition at the court of Russia. A court lady at Vienna once gave us her impressions of the arrival of the Emperor Nicholas in that 213 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA capital. When she saw him enter the castle, in all the splendour of his uniform, his virile beauty, and that air of majesty that shone in his whole person, upright, lofty in stature, a head taller than the princes, aides-de-camp, and chamberlains, she felt that here was a demigod. In the upper gallery, where she was placed, she could not turn away her eyes from the sight. Suddenly, she saw that the swarm of courtiers had retired, the doors were closed. Only the imperial family and a few of the private retinue remained. But the Emperor — where was he ? There, sunk into a seat, his tall form doubled in upon itself, the muscles of his face released from constraint, settling into an expression of unspeakable anguish ; unrecognisable, only the half of himself, as if fallen from the height of grandeur to the depth of misery : the demigod was but a handful of suffering human flesh. This was in 1850. Nicholas was then already stricken by the first attacks of the disease that under- mined the last years of his life, and prematurely ended it. Withdrawn from the eyes of the crowd, he bowed beneath its weight. Before the public, by an heroic effort of will, he became once more the splendid Emperor of the past. Perhaps it was so with Catherine in the last years 6f her reign. The Princess of Saxe-Coburg, who saw her for the first time in 1795, begins her account of the meeting unpleasantly enough, saying that she always fancied a sorceress must look much as did the old Empress. But the sequel shows that her idea of a sorceress was by no means disagree- able. She praises in particular the ‘ singularly fine complexion ’ retained by the Empress, and APPEARANCE- -CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 213 says that in general she seemed to find in her ‘the personification of robust old age, though abroad there is much talk of her maladies.’ Catherine, nevertheless, had never very good health. Sh e suff ered much from headaches, ac- companied by colics. This did not prevent her from laughing at physic and physicians to the very last. It was quite an affair to make her swallow a potion. One day when her doctor, Rogerson, had succeeded in making her take some pills, he was so delighted as to forget him- self, and clapped her ff.miliarly on the shoulder, crying, ‘ Bravo, madame ! ’ She was not in the least offended. From 1722 she was obliged to use glasses to read. Her hearing, though very sharp, was affected by an odd peculiarity ; each of her ears heard sounds in a different way, not merely in loudness, but in tone. This no doubt was the reason why she could never appreciate music, hard as she tried to acquire the taste. Her sense of harmony was completely lacking. It was pretended that when the scarves in which she was accustomed to wrap up her head at night came to be washed, they were seen to emit sparks. The same phenomenon occurred with her bedclothes. Such fables only serve to indicate her actual physical influence over the minds of her contemporaries, marvelling just then over the mysterious discoveries of Franklin. II ‘I assure you,’ she writes in 1774 to Grimm, ‘ that I have not the defects you impute to me, 214 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA because I do not find in myself the qualities that you give me. I am, perhaps, good-natured, ordinarily, but, by nature, I am constrained to Will terribly what 1 will, and there you have what I am worth.’ Observe, however, that if, as a general thing, she is persevering in the exercise and in the invariable tension of this natural energy, having always willed, according to her expression, ‘ that the good of the empire should be accomplished,’ and having willed it with extraordinary force, in small things she is inconstancy itself. She wills everything strongly, but she changes her mind with a no less surprising facility, as her idea of what is ‘good’ varies. In this respect is a woman, from head to foot.~^,In 1767 sne devotes herself to her Instruction for the new laws that she would give to Russia. This work, in which she has pillaged Montesquieu and Beccaria, is in her eyes destined to open a new era in the history of Russia. And she wills, ardently, passionately, that it should be put into action. Difficulties, however, arise ; un- looked-for delays interpose themselves. Where- upon, all at once, she loses interest in the thing. In 1775 she excogitates Rules for the administra- tion of her provinces. And she writes : ‘ My last rules of the 7th November contain 250 quarto pages of print, and I swear to you that it is the best thing I have ever done, and that, in comparison, I look upon the Instruction as so much nonsense.’ And she is dying with desire to show this new masterpiece to her con- fidant. Less than a year afterwards it is finished, ^'irimm has not had sight of the document, and APPEARANCE- CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 215 as he insists on being favoured with it, she loses patience : ‘Why is he so anxious to read any- thing so little amusing? It is very good, very fine, perhaps, but quite tedious.’ At the end of a month she has forgotten all about it. She has the .same way with men as with things : sudden, passionate infatuations, of an unexampled impetuosity, followed by disenchantments and by an equally rapid subsidence into the most,^::^ complete indifference. The greater part of the able men whom she drew to Russia, Diderot among the rest, experienced it in turn. After having passed twenty years of her reign in adorning different residences which have been successively preferred and preferable in her eyes, she takes a fancy, all of a sudden, in 1786, to a site near St. Petersburg, which has no advantages in itself. She summons the Russian architect Starof, of the Academy of St. Petersburg, to build a palace there in all haste ; and she writes to Grimm : ‘ All my country houses are as hovels in comparison with Pella, which is rising like a phoenix.’ Not being wanting, by any means, either in common sense or in acuteness, she comes to find out, late enough, what we have just noted. ‘Two days ago,’ she writes in 1781, ‘I made the discovery that I am a beginner by profession, and that up to now I have finished nothing of all that I have begun.’ And a year afterwards : ‘ For all that, I only want the time to finish ; it is like my laws, my regulations : everything is begun, nothing finished.’ She has her illusions, however, and she adds : ‘ If I live ten years longer, all will be finished to perfection.’ Two 2i6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA years and more having passed, she ends by perceiving that time has nothing to do with the matter. ‘ Never have I so completely realised that I am a very accumulation of broken ends,’ she declares, not without a certain melancholy. To which she adds, that she is ‘as stupid as a goose,’ and that she is convinced Prince Patiom- kine had much more notion of good management than she. She would not be a woman if it did not some- times happen to her not to know very well what she wanted, or even not know it at all, while she was very much in want of something. Apropos of a certain Wagniere, who was secretary to Voltaire, whose services she desired for herself, and whom, after all, she did not know what to do with, she writes to her souffre-douleur : — ‘A truce to your excuses . . . and to mine, for not knowing exactly, now as often, what I wanted, nor what I did not want, and for having consequently written for and against. ... If you will, I will found a professorship, in addition to the one you counsel, on the science of indecision, more natural to me than people think.’ It is to be observed that a disposition of this kind is not made to give a firm and well-balanced direction to the affairs of an empire. And, in- deed, nothing of the kind is to be found in the part that Catherine played in history. If this part was a large one, it was — as she well knew herself — because she had to do with a new people, at the first stage of its career, the stage of ex- pansion. In this stage a people has no need of being directed ; for the most part, it is not even susceptible of direction. It is an ‘impelled APPEARANCE— CHARACTER— TEM-PERAMENT 217 force’ which follows its own impulsion. In obeying it, it is in no danger of going astray. The sole misfortune of which it is capable is that of falling asleep. It would be vain and useless to take such a nation by the hand, and lead it into the way that it knows so well how to find by itself. It suffices to give it a shaking, and start it forward from time to time. That is what Catherine understood in the most wonderful way. Her action was that of a stimulant and a propeller of prodigious vigour. Jn this-xespect she bears comparison with the great est men of history. Her soul is like a spring, always at full tension, always vibrating, of a temper which resists every test. In the moiitTh of August 1765 she is unwell, and is keeping her bed. Rumours are spread that she is enceinte, and that an abortion is to be procured. Nevertheless she has arranged for some great manoeuvres, ‘a camp,’ as it was called then, for the end of the month, and she has announced that she will be present. She is present. The last day, during the ‘battle,’ she remains on horseback for five hours, having to direct the manoeuvres and to send orders, by the intermediary of her aide-de-camp, to Marshal Boutourline and to General Prince Galitzine, who command the two wings of the army. The aide-de-camp, glittering in a cuirass of gold studded with jewels, is Gregory Orlof. Some months later, riots having broken out in the capital, she comes in the middle of the night from Tzarskoi'e-Sielo to St. Petersburg with Orlof, Passek, and a few other trusty friends, mounts on horseback, and traverses the streets 15 2i8 CATHERINE II. of RUSSIA to make sure that her orders have been properly carried out, and proper precautions taken. Even now she has not fully recovered from the more or less mysterious crisis that she has passed through. She can take no nourishment. She, however, thinks well to appear cheerful and in good health. Festivity follows festivity; the French play comes to Tzarskoie. Physical or moral dejection, lassitude, or dis- couragement, are things equally unknown to her. Her force of resistance seems to increase in pro- portion to the demand upon it. In 1791, when things look dark about her, when she has to face Sweden and Turkey, and is in danger of a rupture with England, she has, or affects to have, the most tranquil serenity, the most contagious good humour. She laughs and jests; advises those about her to give up English liquors in good time, and get accustomed to the national drinks. And what ‘ go ’ ; what ardour, for ever youthful ; what impetuousness, never relaxed ! ‘ Courage ! Forward ! That is the motto with which I have passed through good years and bad years alike, and now I have passed through forty, all told, and what is the present evil com”- pared with the past ^ ’ That is her habitual tone. The force of will that she has at command allows her both to con- trol the outward expression of her feelings, and even to abstract herself when she will from these feelings when they become troublesome, intense as they may be, for she is far from being in- different, or hard to move, or naturally calm. Sang-froid, for instance, is not at all a part of her disposition. In May 1790, on the eve of a sea- APPEARANCE- CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 219 fight with Sweden, she passes whole nights with- out sleep, puts every one about her on pins and needles, gets a rotigeitr on her cheek, which she attributes to th(^ acuteness of her emotions, and behaves in such a way that every one, includ- ing her Prime Minister, Besborodko, bursts into tears. No sooner has she known the issue of the battle than her peace of mind is restored, and no matter what bad news may follow, she is gay and light-hearted again. Every moment she is passing through some fever or other. She falls ill with anxiety, and has colics. One day Chra- powicki, her factotum, finds her lying on a sofa, complaining of pains in the region of the heart. ‘ It is the bad weather, no doubt,’ says he, ‘that indisposes your Majesty.’ ‘No,’ replies she, ‘it is Otchakof ; the fortress will be taken to-day or to-morrow; I have often such presentiments.’ These presentiments often prove deceptive, as in the present case, for Otchakof was not taken till two months after. On hearing the news of the death of Louis XVI., she receives such a shock that she is obliged to take to her bed. It is true that, this time, she makes no attempt to master or to dissimulate her emotion, which, however, is not inspired only by a sentiment of political solidarity, for the fibres of her heart are extremely excitable. She has not merely ‘sensibility,’ after the fashion of the day ; she is sincerely accessible to sympathy and pity. ‘ I forgot to drink, eat, and sleep,’ she writes in 1776, announcing the death of her daughter-in- law, ‘ and I know not how I kept up my strength. There were moments when my very heart was torn by the suffering I saw about me.’ 220 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA This does not hinder her from adding to the letter, which is lengthy, a host of details con- cerning current affairs, with the usual jokes, a little heavy, which serve to season her familiar correspondence. After giving herself up to her impressions, she returns to herself, and she explains it all : — ‘On Friday I seemed to turn to stone. ... I who am so given to weeping, saw death without a tear. I said to myself : “If thou weep, the others will sob ; if thou sob, the others will faint, and every one will lose their head and their • . )) ) wits. (She never lost her head) and, she declares in one of her Tetters, she never fainted. Whenever she has to play a part, to take an attitude, and, by her example, to impose it upon others, she is always ready. In August 1790 she thinks seriously of accompanying the army reserve to Finland. ‘Had it been needful,’ she said after- wards, ‘ I should have left my bones in the last battalion. I have never known fear.’ With our present-day notions, it does not seem a very signal proof of courage that she gave in 1768, in being the first, or almost the first, in her capital and in her empire, to be inoculated. For the time it was a great event, and an act of heroism celebrated by all her contemporaries. One need but read the notes written on the subject by the inoculator himself, the Englishman Dimsdale, expressly brought over from London, to realise the idea that the profession itself still cherished in regard to the danger of the opera- tion. We cut open or trepan a man to-day with much less concern. Catherine bared her arm to APPEARANCE— CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 221 the lancet on the 26th October 1768. A week afterwards she had her son inoculated. On the 22nd of November the members of the legislative commission, and all the chief dignitaries, as- sembled in the church of Our Lady of Kasan, where a decree of the senate was read, command- ing public prayers for the occasion ; after which they went in a body to present their compliments and thanks to her Majesty. A boy of seven, named Markof, who had been inoculated first' of all, in order to use the lymph found on him, was ennobled in return for it, and received the sur- name of Ospiennyi = smallpox). Catherine took a liking to him, and had him brought up under her eyes. The family of this name, now occupying a high position in Russia, owes its fortune to this ancestor. Dr. Dimsdale received the title of baron, the honorary charge of the physicians in ordinary to her Majesty, the rank of Chancellor of State, and a pension of ^500 sterling. It was certainly much ado about nothing; but some years later, in 1772, the Abbe Galiani announced, as still an important piece of news, the inoculation of the son of the Prince of San Angelo Imperiali at Naples, the first that had taken place in that city. L i 17 68 Voltaire^, himself found much to admire in an Empress^ who had been inoculated ‘ with less ceremony than a nun who takes a bath.’ Catherine is perhaps the one who thought least of her bravery. Before the deputations that came to compliment her, she thought it well to take a serious air, declaring ‘ that she had done no more than her duty, for a shepherd is bound to give his life for his sheep.’ But, writing a few days afterwards 222 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA to General Braun, the Governor of Livonia, she laughs at those who are lost in admiration of her courage : ‘ As for courage, I think every little urchin in the streets of London has just as much.’ in Certainly, she possesses a happy equilibrium of faculties, an excellent moral health. It is this which renders her easy to get on with, though she has perhaps less indulgence and benignity than she would credit herself with, but still is in no wise given to wrangling, nor exces- sively hard to please, nor unreasonably severe. Outside official ceremonies, in regard to which she is very particular, giving to them the greatest possible lustre, she is full of c harm in her inter- course with others. She has an easy simplicity which puts every one at ease, and which allows her to maintain her own rank, and to keep others in their proper place, without her appearing to give the matter a thought. On the birth of her grandson, Alexander, she falls to regretting that there are no more fairies ‘to endow little children with all one would like them to have,’ and she writes to Grimm; ‘For my part, I would give them nice presents, and I would whisper in their ear : “ Ladies, be natural, only be natural, and experience will do pretty well all the rest.” ’ She is bon enfant, and puts on a familiar manner. She hits her secretary in the ribs with a roll of paper, and tells him : ‘ .Some day 1 will kill you like that.’ In corresponding with her master of the horse, M. Eck, she writes : ‘ Monsieur mon voisin.’ APPEARANCE— CHARA CTER— TEMPERAMENT 223 The Prince de Ligne recounts an episode of the tour in the Crimea, when she took it into her head to be thee’d and thou’d by every one, and to tutoyer them in return. This whim often returned to her. ‘You cannot conceive,’ she writes to Grimm, ‘ how I love to be tutoyde ; I wish it were done all over Europe.’ Then hear her account of her relations with Mme. Todi, a famous prima donna, whose talent she could not appreciate, but whom she was willing to pay very liberally. This was at Tzarskoie-Sielo : — ‘ Mme. Todi is here, and she is always about with her husband. Very often we meet face to face, always however without coming in collision. I say to her : “ Good-morning or good-evening, Mme. Todi, how do you do?” She kisses my hands, and I her cheek ; our dogs smell one another ; she takes hers under her arm, I call mine, and we both go on our way. When she sings, I listen and applaud, and we both say that we get on very well together.’ She carries her condescension in the matter of sociability to great lengths. If any one ventures to criticise her choice of friends and lovers, she replies : ‘ Before being what I am I was thirty- three years what others are, and it is not quite twenty years that I have been what they are not. And that teaches one how to live.’ On the other hand she makes merry at the expense of the great : ‘ Do you know why I dread Kings’ visits ? Be- cause they are generally tiresome, insipid people, and you have to be stiff and formal with them. These persons of renown pay much respect to my unaffected ways, and I would show them all my wit ; sometimes I show it by listening to 224 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA them, and as I love to chatter, the silence bores me.’ Her proverbial munificence is not only in ostentation. Grimm often distriouted large sums for her anonymously. And she puts a charming grace and delicacy in some of her gifts. ‘Your Royal Highness,’ she writes to the Comte d’ Artois, who is leaving Russia, ‘ wishes, doubtless, to make some small presents to the people who have done you service during your stay here. But, as you know, I have forbidden all commerce and communication with your unhappy France, and you will seek in vain to buy any trinkets in the city ; there are none in Russia save in my cabinet; and I hope your Highness will accept these from his affectionate friend Catherine.’ What she lacks, in this as in so many things, is moderation. She is well aware of it herself, and admits : ‘ I know not how to give ; I give too much or not enough.’ One would say that her destiny, in raising her to such a height, has taken from her the sense of proportions. She is either prodigal or miserly. When she has exhausted her resources by her excessive expenditure and liberalities she has ‘ a heart of stone ’ for the most worthy, the most just, demands upon her. She gives a third of his pension to Prince Viazemski on his retirem'ent. He has served her for thirty years, and she has appreciated his services, but he has ceased to please her. The poor man dies of vexation. With those who please her, as long as they have that good fortune, she knows no stint. In 1781, when Count Branicki married a niece of Patiomkine, she gave 500,000 roubles as a APPEARANCE— CHARA CTER— TEMPERA ME NT 225 marriage portion to the bride, and the same amount to her husband, to pay his debts. One day she amused herself with imagining how the principal people at her court might meet their end. Ivan Tchernichef would die of rage. Countess Roumiantsof of having shuffled the cards too much, Mme. Vsievolodsky of an excess of sighs ; and so forth. She herself would die — of complaisance. It is not only complaisance, there iS in her an instinctive generosity which comes out in more than one way.'“'Wi'th those whom she honours with her confidence she has none of that facile change of front so common to her sex. She is incapable of suspicion. One of the foreign artists whom she had commissioned to make considerable purchases for her gallery at the Hermitage, Reiffenstein — the ‘divine’ Reiffen- stein, as she called him — fancied his honesty suspected. Grimm, who acted as intermediary, became anxious about it. ‘ Begone with your notes and accounts, both of you!’ wrote the Empress to the latter. ‘ I never suspected either of you in my life. Why do you trouble me with stingy, useless things of that sort ? ’ She added : ‘No one about me has insinuated anything against /e divin' Grimm could well believe her, for she was absolutely averse to this kind of insinuation, so much favoured in courts. In general, any one did but do a bad turn for himself by saying evil of others. Patiomkine himself experienced this in trying to shake the credit of Prince Viazemski. If there was need, however, to serve or defend 226 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA her friends, she was ready to do anytl;ing, in total forgetfulness of her rank. She learns, for instance, that Mme. Ribas, the wife of an Italian adventurer whom she has made Admiral, is in childbed. She jumps into the first carriage that she finds at the gate of the palace, enters like a whirlwind into the room of her friend, turns up her sleeves, and puts on an apron. ‘Now there are two of us,’ she says to the midwife ; ‘ let us do our best’ It often happens that advantage is taken of this well-known characteristic. ‘ They know I am good to bother,’ she says. Is she simply ‘good,’ in reality? Yes, in her way, which assuredly is not the way of everybody. The absolute mistress of forty millions of men is not ‘everybody.’ Mme. Vig^e- Lebrun dreamed of painting the portrait of the great sovereign. ‘ Take,’ said some one, ‘ the map of the empire of Russia for canvas, the darkness of ignorance for background, the spoils of Poland for drapery, human blood for colouring, the monuments of her reign for the cartoon, and for the shadow six months of her son’s reign.’ There is some truth in this sombre picture, but it wants shading. At the moment of the terrible uprising of Pougatchef, sharp as was Catherine in the repression of a revolt which put her empire to the stake, she bids General Panine use no more than the indispensable severity. After the capture of the rebel, she does her best to succour the victims of this terrible civil war. Yet, in Poland, the conduct of her generals is for the most part atrocious, and she never interferes. She even compliments Souvarof after the massacre which accompanies the taking of Warsaw. And in this empire of hers, ‘ from which 1 .) APPEARANCE— CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 227 the light now comes,’ the knout still bears sway, the stick still falls on the bleeding shoulders of the serf. She lets knout and stick do their work. How is this to be understood ? It is needful first of all to realise the conception — a well-reasoned and elaborated conception — of the position of the sovereign and of the exigencies ^ of that position, which obtained in the mind of this autocratic ruler. We cannot make war with- out dead or wounded, nor can we subdue a people jealous of its liberty without stifling its resistance in blood. Having resolved on the annexation of Poland — rightly or wrongly, need not be discussed here — it was necessary to accept all the con- sequences of the enterprise. This Catherine did, taking upon herself, calmly and frankly, the entire responsibility of the affair. Calmly, for, in these matters, reasons of state alone influence her ; they take the place of conscience, and even of feeling. Frankly, for she is not a hypocrite. An actress ever, and of the first order, by reason of her position, which is nothing but a part to play. It is in this sense that the French envoy Durand could say of her : ‘ My experience is quite useless ; the woman is more false than our women are tricky. I can say no more.’ But she was never a hyprocrite by preference, for the pleasure of deceiving, like so many ; nor by need of deceiving herself. ‘ She was too proud to deceive,’ said the Prince de Ligne. In what she did, or suffered to be done, in Poland, she has had many imitators, beginning with the pious Maria Theresa herself. Only Maria Theresa mingled her tears with the blood that she shed. ‘ She is always crying and 228 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Stealing,’ said Frederick. Catherine keeps dry- eyed. Catherine, too, followed a different principle of government. A sovereign, however absolute, cannot be everywhere at once. Souvarof has orders to take Warsaw. He takes it. How ? That is his affair, not that of any one else. The principle is contestable, but we have not to discuss political theories in a study of character. Finally, Catherine is a Russian sovereign, and the Russia of the eighteenth century, with- out gc ig further, is a country where European ideas in , regard to justice and sentiment are quite out of place, w'^here both moral and physical sensibility seem to obey different laws. In 1766, during the Empress’s stay at Peterhof, a sudden alarum one night startles her Majesty and all about her. There is great excitement and confusion. It turns out that a lackey, who has been making love to one of the waiting- maids of Catherine, has caused all this fright. He is brought to trial, and condemned to receive a hundred and one strokes of the knout, which is practically equivalent to a sentence of death, to have his nose slit, to be branded on the forehead with a hot iron, and to end his days in Siberia, if he recovers. No one has ahy thing to say against the sentence. It is after such traits, and on the scale of notions, sentiments, and sensations, apparently proper to the surroundings in which they have root, that we require to judge a sovereign who, politically speaking, could certainly not claim the title of ‘ most gracious.’ Apart from politics, Catherine is an adored APPEARANCE— CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 229 and adorable sovereign. Those about her have nothing but praise for her dealings. Her servants are spoilt children. The story of the chimney-sweep is well known. Always an early riser, in order to work more quietly in the silence of the early hours, the Empress some- times lights her own fire, so as not to disturb any one. One morning, as she sets the faggots in a blaze, she hears piercing cries from the chimney, followed by a volley of abuse. She understands, quickly puts out the fis^e, and humbly proffers her excuses to the priitr little chimney-sweep whom she had nearly roasted alive. There are thousands of similar stories told of her. One day, the Countess Bruce enters the Empress’s bedroom and finds her Majesty alone, half-dressed, with her arms folded in the attitude of one who is waiting patiently be- cause she is obliged to wait. Seeing her surprise, Catherine explains the case — ‘What do you think ? my waiting- maids have all deserted me. I had been trying on a dress which fitted so badly that I lost my temper ; so they left me like this . . . and I am waiting till they have cooled down.’ One day she sends Grimm an almost inde- cipherable letter, and thus excuses herself — ‘ My valets de chambre give me two new pens a day, but when they are worn out I never venture to ask for more, but I turn and turn them again as best I can.’ One evening, after ringing in vain for sornie time, she goes into the anteroom and finds these same valets de chambre absorbed in a game of cards. She offers one of them to take his place so that CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 230 she can finish the game for him, while he can do an urgent errand for her. She catches some servants in the act of making off with ^ pro- visions intended for her table. ‘ Let this be the last time,’ she says, with severity; then she adds : ‘ And now, be off quickly, or the mar^ckal de la cour will catch you.’ She sees in the court- yard of the palace an old woman running after a fowl, and soon the valets are running after the old woman, anxious to show their zeal under the eyes of the Empress. For this fowl is a fowl ‘belonging to her Majesty’s treasure,’ and the woman is the grandmother of a court scullion ; a double crime. Catherine, after making in- quiries, orders a fowl to be given every day to the poor old soul, but a fowl ready trussed.^ She keeps by her, despite her infirmities, an old German nurse, whom she watches over with the greatest care. ‘ I feared her,’ she writes to Grimm, announcing her death, ‘as I dread fire, or the visits of kings and great people. Whenever she saw me, she would seize me by the head, and kiss me again and again till she half stifled me. And she always smelt of tobacco, which her respected husband used largely.’ Nevertheless, she is far from being patient, for naturally she is quick-tempered, too quick- tempered. Her fits of rage are one of her most noticeable defects. Grimm compares her to Etna, and she delights in the comparison. She calls the volcano ‘ my cousin,’ and fre- quently asks for news of it. For she knows her defect, and it is this that enables her to combat it effectually. If she gives way to APPEARANCE— CHARACTER— TEMPERAMIiWr " 231 the first paroxysm of anger, she immediately recovers command of herself. If it is in her private room, she turns up her sleeves with a gesture to which she is accustomed, and begins to walk to and fro, drinking glass after glass of water. Never does she give an order or a signature in one of these passing fits of rage. In her speech she gives way sometimes to undignified expressions, as in her sallies against Gustave III. during the war with Sweden. 'Canaille' in French and ' Bestie' in German are too often part of her vocabulary. She always, however, regrets what she has done or said, and, in course of time, so strictly does she watch over and restrain herself, she attains to a bearing which makes this weakness of her character or temperament seem almost incredible. ‘ She said to me slowly,’ writes the Prince de Ligne, ‘that she had been extremely quick- tempered, which one could scarcely believe. . . . Her three bows a la Russe are made always in the same way in entering a room, one to the left, one to the right, and one in the middle. Everything in her was measured, methodical. . . . She loves to repeat ‘J’ai de I’imperturba- bilit^,’ taking a quarter of an hour to say the word.’ Senac de Meilhan, who visited Russia in 1750, confirms these characteristics. In one of his letters, dated from St. Petersburg, he speaks of the inexpressible impression of tran- quillity and serenity with which the appearance of Catherine before the court is always accom- panied. She does not affect the rigidity of a statue. She looks round her with eyes that seem to see everything. She speaks slowly, 232 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA not as if seeking for words, but as if choosing quietly those that suit her. Nevertheless, to the end of her life, Catherine kept to her habit of pinning her serviette under her chin on sitting down to table. ‘ She could not otherwise,’ as she frankly avows, ‘eat an egg, without dropping half of it on her collerette.’ IV ^ Her temperament is particularly lively, san- guine, and impetuous. This appears, we know well, in more than one aspect of her private life. \To this we shall have to return. Let us say here that the shamelessness of her morals, which it would be idle to try to attenuate, does not seem to have its root in any constitutional vice. She is neither hysterical nor tainted with nympho- mania. 1 1 is a sensual woman who, being E mpress, gives free course to her senses, imperially. What she does in this order of things is done as she does everything else, quietly, imperturbably — we might almost say methodically. She gives way to no bewilderments of imagination, to no dis- order of nerves. Love with her is but the natural function of a physic^al and moral organism en- dowed with exceptional energy, and it has the same imperious character, the same lasting power, as the other phenomena of her life. She is still amorous at sixty-seven ! Her other tastes are those of a person well- balanced, both mentally and physically. She loves the arts, and the society of intelligent and learned people. She loves nature. Gardening, ‘planto- mania’as she calls it, is one of her favourite occupa- appearance— C juARA CTER— TEMPERAMENT 233 tions. /31<)tre that though she adores flowers, she cannot endur<; too strong perfumes, that of musk in particular. £very day, at a fixed hour, which a bell announcerto the winged population, she appears at a windovV of the palace and throws out crumbs to tV>p .tlousands of birds that are accustomed to come to her to be fed. Elizabeth used to feed frogs, which were expressly kept in the park : one sees the difference, the morbid, extravagant note. In •Catherine there is nothing of the kind. She likes birds, dogs, who play a considerable part in her private life, horses too ^ she likes animals in general, but she prefer^ those which are more generally liked. All that is very simple, very natural, very normal. Elizabeth led an irregular life, turning night into day, never having a fixed hour for anything. \ Catherine is regularity itself ; always early to bed, up with the dawn, fitting in her occupations as well as her pleasures with a programme that she has made out beforehand, and that she carries out^ without deviation.^ Elizabeth used to get drunk^' Catherine is sober, eating" little, only drinking a mouthful of wine at. her principal meal, never taking supper. In public and in private, save for the mysteries of the alcove, she is perfectly correct in demeanour, never allowing an impropriety in conversation. And in this there is no hypocrisy, for she shows, and indeed shows off, her lovers. In order to find something unnatural, abnor- mal, in her, some have laid emphasis on her sup- posed indifference to family feeling. The point is susceptible of controversy. She despised and detested her husband, if she did not kill him or let him be killed ; and she was not tender towards 234 "" CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA her son, if she did not think of disinheriting him. Still it must be remembered what this husband and this son really were, both to her and to Russia. She never saw again her only brother, never having allowed him to come and see her, though she only survived him by three years. That was a matter of policy. She found that there were ..Germans enough in Russia, herself among the number. With her, it is certain, the head always ruled the heart, and, though German,, she was by no means sentimental. But she was, as we shall see, a delightful grandmother, and she was passionately fond of children. ^ H er shameless sensuality thus seems an iso- j lated phenomenon, without connection with any other in her temperament. Perhaps this is only in appearance ; perhaps we should seek a certain / connection, if not the relation of cause to effect, ^ between this side of her nature and another that we are about to look into, that is to say, the intellectual culture of one who loved to call herself the pupil of Voltaire. If, indeed, there / is method in this madness of the senses, which / she does not lose even in middle age, there is also a certain lofty cynicism, a certain tran- quil assurance, which a physiological peculiarity, anomaly if you will, is not sufficient to explain. The philosophical spirit of the eighteenth century 1 has passed over it, and not only the spirit of the \ age of Brantome. V ^ Catherine is a great temperament, not a great ^intellect. She herself did not pretend to ‘a / creative mind.’ Nevertheless she prides herself APPEARANCE -CHARACTER— TEMPERAMENT 235 on her originality. ‘All my life,’ she wntes to Mme. de Bielke, ‘ I never could tolerate imita- tion, and, to put it bluntly, I am as much of an original as the most determined Englishman.’ But it is in her tastes, her habits, her modes of action, that is to say in her temperament rather than in her mind, that we must look for this personal note. There is not a single new idea in her Instruction for the laws, written at the age of thirty-six, in the full vigour of, her intellectual faculties. It is the second-rate work of a student of rhetoric, who has been given as a task the analysis of Montesquieu and Beccaria, and who has done creditably, but without showing any great talent. This work, nevertheless, gives her enormous trouble. At the end of March 1765 she has been toiling at it for two months, at the rate of three hours a day. Her best hours, in the morning, are given up to this work. By the middle of June she has covered sixty-four pages, and she feels that she has made a considerable effort. She is quite worn out. ‘ I have emptied my sack,’ she writes, ‘and, after this, I shall not write another word for the rest of my life.’ We have all known these vows, and, too, this im- pression of weariness at the end of the first long effort. But having regard to the actual result, this author’s trouble is almost laughable. The sack, too, that she had emptied, or thought she had emptied, was easy to replace, for it was not hers. She found plenty more in turn.A Had she then nothing of her own.? r Yes, much good sense, to begin with, joined, singularly enough, to a great wealth of imagination. She passed the thirty-four years of her reign in build- CATHERINE II. OF RUSH A 236 ing castles in the air, magnificent buildings, founded on nothing, and evaporating in space at . the least breath. But the day came when one stone, a single stone, was placed in the soil, as if by miracle, at the angle of the fantastic edifice. It was Catherine who had planted It there. The Russian people, this good people which has not yet come to realise itself, nor to dispute with those who govern it, did the rest. It brought its sweat and blood, and, like the Egyptian colossi, where the effort of thousands of unknown existences is superposed, the edifice rose and assumed tangible form. The conquest of the Taurida was thus accomplished. This was one of Catherine’s dreams, put in action and trans- lated into a novel of adventures by Patiomkine. But the corner-stone appeared suddenly in a port of the Black Sea, and the Crimea of to-day was then created. /Nevertheless Catherine fascinated, and even dazzled, by her qualities of mind the most part of those to whom she gave the chance of judg- ing ; men of a superior order of intellect, such as Diderot, for example. It was an effect of mirage, it seems to us, the artificial product of a kind of fascination in which there were many elements ; a superior force of will, the supreme art of mise en scene that we know already, and a third I element, surprising, unlooked for, well-nigh in- / credible in this German of the North — a heat / and fire which are extraordinary, overpowering, which seem as if they must be Southern by birth. Judging by the reports of her way of talking, the flow and colour of words which 1 crowd from her lips, the absolute volubility which / / I I I APPEARANCE— CHAR ACTER— TEMPERAMENT 237 she manifests at every turn, Catherine is a true Southern. ‘She loved to chatter,’ she said, and Grimm despaired of being able to preserve for posterity any idea of what her conversation was. ‘ One must have seen, at those moments, this singular head, made up of genius and of grace, to form an idea of the fire that swayed her, the shafts that she let fly, the sallies that pressed, jostling, so to speak, and tumbling on one another, like the limpid waters of a natural waterfall. Had it only been in my power to take down literally these conversations, the world would have possessed a precious and perhaps unique fragment of the history of the human mind. The imagination and the judgment were equally impressed by this profound and rapid sweep of vision, whose immense reach passed like a flash. And how could one seize, on the sudden wing, all these fine, fugitive traits of light ? ’ What Grimm dared not attempt, Catherine has essayed to do herself. In 1780, the day after a conversation which had astonished Count Ivan Tchernichef, she sent him, at his request, a literal report of it. This fragment has been preserved, and it is curious. Must we confess that it is somewhat deceptive? It reminds us of an observation that an old savant, who had reached the extreme limits of human existence, and who was an enfant terrible on occasion, made before us one day to a politician afflicted with the mania of publishing, in the least offlcial of quarters, speeches that the House had not always heard : ‘ Excuse me, sir, I see at every moment, in what you have given me to read, the words : Sen- sation, prolonged applause, uproar. But though 238 CATHERINE II. 0.7 RUSSIA I have looked for it, I can see nothing extra' ordinary in all you say.’ It is a somewhat similar impression that we receive on reading the famous report. We look in vain for the brilliant sayings, the sallies of wit, the sparks of genius, of which Grimm tells us. To begin with, there is a quotation from the P/aideurs of Racine, ‘ Ma foi, sur I’avenir bien fou qui se fiera,’ serving as motto to flights of political prophesying, in which ‘ the eagle eye ’ is nowhere to be seen. ‘ I predict that France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia will clash together for a time, will do one another grievous hurt, and aid one another in turn, and will all four arrive at the highest pitch of glory.’ This resembles the deliverance of an extra- lucid somnambulist, unless one chooses to see in it a vision of the wars of Europe. But did Catherine foresee the Revolution, as some have alleged ? We do not see it, unless indeed it be in this phrase : ‘ Buffbn has predicted that one day a comet will hook on to our globe and carry it with it. I fancy that its course will be from west to east.’ But this is the veriest style of fortune-telling, and Mile. Lenormand would not have expressed it better. The mistakes of the King of France could not but strike the penetrating mind of the Czarina. Two years before she said to Count Tchernichef : ‘ I do not like to see Marie-Antoinette laugh so much^ and laugh at everything. It is true that she is a woman, and very much a woman ; I am too, somewhat ; in her place and her circumstances I should be afraid that some one would say : He APPEARANC who laughs ' expressive, she saw truel her sense of t1 of her rivals if same degree. — and both Fl bably her infe^i more flexibilii had a more d | incomparable But to retunH tion, or rather or an unhappy phras^ ‘ England ! Fanatic! ports it, fanaticism ourselves what this ma have suggested it. It actuality of the moment! present day journalists. London has just been thdl movement against the Cathor ambitious and unscrupulous the traditional cry of ‘No Po twenty thousand fanatics has Westminster, and the members o have themselves been somewhat violeni In this passing crisis Catherine historic law. Then follow some philosophical consider ‘ One may have wit, talent, morals, reason, as much as you will ; but not success, fortune, and especially favour.’ That is not very new, nor very profound, even very true. For talented and virtuo Lint of their ftener, than money-bags, commonplace and is some- rich have an , since kings se who have n inspired in ool of modern ortunes of which accumulation. Yet not yet born. But bxander of Macedon ughts ? a whole, we can see 5ut it except the import- :;rself, and not Tchernichef attached to it. It is true doubt the most attractive, is lost for us. The words e accent, the impetuous flow well-modulated voice, had not -cess of their own, the true orator’s our words, divine Princess, there is method nor order. There is that sove- ind incomprehensible spirit with which you owered.’ Thus did Field-Marshal Munich :ss himself in a letter addressed to the iress a few months after her accession, eloquence of Catherine had, for him also, s enigmatic side. IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 241 CHAPTER II IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES /■ \/ With the temperament that we have seen,\^ Catherine could not well be a woman with prin- ( ciples, at least immutable principles, nor with formulated ideas. Her fixed ideas, which she has often had, were so only for the moment ; they were comets, not the guiding stars of > her life. One point, however, on which she never varies, is the nati onal characte r, essentially Russian, that she impresses on her ^v gy nment. and that she seeks to extend to the entire development, politi- cal, intellectual, and moral, of the Slavonic people, over whose destinies she, a German princess, has been called to preside. Not only the admi- nistrative and legislative acts of her reign, but her slightest sayings and doings bear the trace of this constant preoccupation. Falconet had hard work not to invest Peter I. 'with the national Russian costume that the Czar was so emphatic in forbidding throughout his empire. Catherine would have had this trait in the history of the great reformer forgotten. She would have imposed, not merely upon the present, but upon the past, of her adopted country, a whole host of things contrary to the fact, but conformable to the idea that it had pleased her to give her- self and others in regard to this land c of vast horizons, so tempting to flights of fancy. She 242 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA would have rewritten in her own way the whole history of the old Muscovite fatherlani In 1790 Senac de Meilhan offered himself as historio- grapher of the empire : she hesitated to accept the offer. Would he be willing to lay aside the prejudices ‘ that most strangers have against Russia ’ ? — to the point of believing, for example, ‘ that before Peter the Great the empire had neither laws nor administration.’ Now, ‘ it is true that the troubles which followed on the death of the Czar Ivan Vassilevitch had put back Russia from forty to fifty years, but before this time it was on the level of the rest of Europe . . . the Grand Dukes of Russia took a prominent part in the affairs of Europe, and were allied and connected with all the sovereign houses of our hemisphere.’ After this the poor Senac despaired of be- ing able to cope with his task. But here too Catherine was convinced. She wrote to Grimm : ‘ No history furnishes better or greater men than ours. I am passionately fond of this history.’ She meant, besides, to have a good space given to her own reign, ‘ for we live in an age in which, far from hiding the lustre of things and actions, it is essential to sustain people’s minds.’ Would Senac consent to be ‘ directed ’ in this respect ? Here again we observe a trace of the huge proportions which the vast empire, so strangely become her own property, had little by little attained in the Czarina’s mind ; and we^see one fixed star the more in her firniament. This hyperbolic idea of grandeur, 'applied to all the constituent elements of the national inheritance, to the past as to the present of Russia, to its IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 243 extent as to its population, to its material power as to its moral worth, to its preponderance in the Slavonic world as to its European position, is one of those which never left Catherine, and never lost its hold upon her. She seems dazzled, hallucinated, and as if hypnotised before this collossal conception. High as was the opinion that she had, and that she wished others to have of herself, of the merits of her government, and of the great events which marked it, she did not hesitate to make herself small by comparison : ‘All that I can do for Russia is but a drop of water in the sea.’ Russia is the sea, the ocean with its unsounded depths, its borders lost to sight in the immensity of space. It is for that that/ she has been willing to submerge in it her own past, and the very remembrance of her German fatherland. Never- theless, it is she who writes, in 1782, complaining to Grimm of the conduct of the Sultan Abdul- Hamid : ‘ Das ist tmmdglich dass ich mir sollte auf die Nase spieleji lassen. You know that a German will never suffer that.’ j. But her mind is essentially mobile, and, as sh^ confesses, she does not always know what she wants, or even what she says, especially when she chats with her confidant, pen in hand, in her moments of most complete unbending, after the fatigues of her formidable task. But she has conscientiously applied to herself her Russophilist programme, and she has become Russian from head to foot, not only on the surface and by an artifice, but sincerely and profoundly, in her mind and flesh, in her most formal language, her most familiar motion, her most private thought. \The following 244 CATHERIXE II. OF RUSSIA lines were probably seen by no one till after her death. ‘Never has the universe produced a creature more manly, more solid, more frank, more human, more benevolent, more generous, more obliging, than the Scythian (Scythian and Russian are synonymous in her eyes). No man equals him in regularity of features, in beauty of face, in fine- ness of complexion, build, and stature ; having for the most part well-nourished, or nervous and muscular, limbs, a thick beard, long and bushy hair ; naturally averse to all ruse and artifice, to which his probity and uprightness are utterly alien. There is not on the earth a horse-soldier or foot-soldier, or sailor, or manager to equal him. No one is tenderer to his children and his kinsmen. He has an inborn deference for his parents and superiors. He is prompt and exact in obedience, always faithful.’ This is quite a rhapsody ! And no doubt there is something in it of personal recollection, too flatteringly recalled. In course of time, however, something more immaterial, purer and more profound, found its way into the love of Russia that the love of certain Russians gave to Catherine. We must not forget, among the ideas to which she remained faithful, what has been called the great idea of her reign : the Greek project. N We shall see that she has had it in view from 1 762, and that she still has it in view on the eve of her death.'^^ It was a beautiful dream, beautiful and fantastic. The resurrection of Greece,‘/the enfranchisement of the Yougo- Slavs, mingled with other equally dazzling, but less disinterested IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 245 visions : Con stantinop le opening its gates to , Christianity^ represented by a Russian army ; the crescent replaced on the dome of St. Sophia by the double Greek cross, crowned by the two- headed imperial eagle. It is on this account that the second son of Paul is named Constantine, and not Peter or Ivan ; it is on this account that there is a Greek nurse and a Greek servant, who was afterwards to become an important per- sonage, Count Kourouta. There was also a corps of Greek cadets, a Greek district-government at Kherson, newly founded, and under the charge of Eugene,a Bulgarian. Medals were struck, on which were seen symbolic and suggestive images : on one side the Empress, on the other Constantinople in flames, a minaret crumbling into the sea, and the cross resplendent in the clouds. The journal of Chrapowicki is not less edifying on the subject. On August 17, 1787, he considers a secret pro- ject of Patiomkine for the capture of Bakou and Derbent. Capital for that could be made out of the troubles in Persia, and, by means of other connections, a province could be formed to be called Albania, which would serve as provisional appointment for the Grand Duke Constantine. On April 21, 1788, Moldavia and Wallachia are discussed : these provinces should remain independent, in order to serve as nucleus to the future iXlaGia,’ that is to say, the future monarchy^f Greece. On October 9, 1789, the are dotted. The Greeks need to be ‘stirred up ’ : Constantine may take charge of that. He has a future before him. In thirty years he will have got from Sebastopol to Constantinople. 246 CA THERINE 11. OF RUSSIA II ( In 1769 the cause of liberty- lias no more 'i enthusiastic defender in Europe than the Empress of Russia. ‘To the brave Corsicans, defenders of liberty and of their country, and, in particular, to General Paoli : Gentlemen ! All Europe has for many years seen you oppose oppression, defend and redeem the country from an unjust usurpation, and fight for liberty. It is the duty of every human creature to aid and support all who mani- fest sentiments so noble, so great, and so natural.’ The letter is from the hand of Catherine, and is signed ‘ Your sincere friends, the inhabitants of the North Pole (sic).’ A sum of money is added, which passes in the eyes of the brave Corsicans as the result of a subscription. This, doubtless, is in order to spare them the humiliation of being subventioned by an absolute monarch, and also to make them believe that there is, in the neigh- bourhood of the ‘ North Pole,’ a respectable number of people capable of sympathising with the cause they defend. In 1781 Catherine comes forward on behalf of Necker. His famous Compte rendu, which is practically an act of accusation against the ad- ministration of royal finances, that is to say against royalty itself, enchants and delights her. She does not doubt that heaven has destined the able Genevese for the salvation of France. Certainly she has not much love, just then, IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 247 er for France or for the turn that things are ng there ; but in her hostile feelings the court s as large, if not larger, a place than the people, and the old rdgime foundering under the rising flood of social claims has no part in her fa\ our. This is the impression we receive from her correspondence with her son and her daughter- in-law, during the visit of their Imperial High- nesses, in 1782, to Paris. Here is a specimen. It is Catherine who writes : — ‘ May\ God bless her most Christian Majesty, her shows, her balls and her plays, her rouge and her beards, well or ill adjusted. I am not sorry that this annoys you and makes you anxious to return. But, how is it that, with its passion for the play, Paris is no better off than we ? I know the reason ; it is because every one leaves the good show for the bad ; that in tragedy they have nothing but what is atrocious ; that plays are written by thos e who know neither how to make comedies for .aughter nor tragedies for tears ; that comedy, instead of bringing laughter, brings tears ; that nothing is in its proper place ; that colours even have only abject and indecent names. All that encourages no sort of talent, but spoils it.’ A frivolous and corrupt court, in the midst of a society which its evil example has brought to the verge of a fatal precipice, that is the idea Catherine seems to hold, at this time, in regard to the country of her ‘ dear master,’ who himself has given colour to her opinions, in denying at every opportunity his kinship with the pitiable ‘Vandals.’ Her dominant idea, however, is a feeling of in- difference in regard to men and things there. CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 248 For a long time, up to the very verge of the revolutionary crisis, the events and agitations, ' this far country, seem to her without any gene importance ; she does not perceive their bear' * Nor, whatever may have been said to the trary, does she see the approach of the terr p; On April 19, 1788, she writes to Grimm: ‘I do not share the belief of those who imaginet'^'a.. A^e are on the eve of a great revolution. ’ ^^g, in the course of her tour through the^ir-:; i^of the resolution of Louis XVI. to q .<9 .e an ‘Assembly of Notables,’ she sees in - ' nly an imitation of her own legislative comm’ i. a. She invites Lafayette to visit her at Ki- To open her eyes on what is being prer i by the Lafayettes, it needs the thunr ap of the taking of the Bastille. Then she ns to under- stand what is in the air, and thv .Lzette de St.- P^Ursbour£', which, had been sile ■ <■. the Assembly of the States and the Tennis-Cu^ . Oath, breaks out in indignant protestations : ‘ ^ ' hand shakes with horror,’ etc. The rest c ' ^ article may be imagined. Soon the co*" .ents are com- pared by the officious jo' to ‘a drunken mob,’ as their successors ; .0 be compared to ‘ cannibals.’ From this moment C rine’s ideas underwent a rapid change, and i' .urious to follow, in her correspondence and confidential conversation, the progress of tV evolution. In June 1790 Grimm, who has nv.- yet had time to perceive the change which is coming over the Empress’s mind, asks for her portrait on behalf of Bailly, offering in exchange that of the revolutionary hero of the day. Catherine replies — IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 249 ‘ Listen ; I cannot accede to your request, and it is as little suitable for the mayor who has dis- monarchised France to have the portrait of the most aristocratic Empress in Europe, as it would be for her to send it to the dismonarchising mayor ; it would be to place both the dis- monarchising mayor and the aristocratissime Empress in contradiction with themselves and their fufcjfions, past, present, and future.’ i^no^BiWays after — ‘ I repCt that you are not to give to the dis- monarch^ing mayor the portrait of the greatest aristocrat in Europe ; I would have nothing to do with Jean Marcel, who will be strung up a la lanterm some day soon.’ Here is a complete throwing overboard of republicanism. It is not so with regard to philo- sophy, to which the Empress still clings. She endeavours to find out how far it is responsible for the present events — TO GRIMM. * Jum 25, 1790. ‘The National Assembly should burn all the best French authors, and all that has carried their language over Europe, for all that declares against the abominable mess that they have made. . . . As for the people and its opinion, that is of no great consequence ! ’ It is this last phrase especially which shows the antagonism, now only capable of increase, be- y tween the spirit of Catherine and of the Revolu- tion. It is the part, more and more prominent, played by the people in the events of which Paris has become the theatre that shocks and offends the sovereign. There was a time when, in this 17 250 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA respect also, she had other ideas. At the outset of her reign, in gathering together her legislative commission, she did nothing less, in reality, than summon it from the mass of her subjects. But it is then, too, that, coming for the first time in contact with the popular element, she began little by little to change her mind in regard to it. Perhaps she was unwise in generalising from her impressions, but she had no other points of comparison. She could but form her opinion on what was before her eyes, and this opinion became a profound contempt. In 1787, as her secretary, Chrapowicki, points out to her the enor- mous number of peasants who crowd to see her and pay homage to her in a certain country town, she replies with a shrug of the shoulders : ‘ They would come just the same to see a bear.’ It is the same spirit to which she gives utterance two years after, when, referring to the composition of the political clubs in France, she says : ‘ How can shoemakers have anything to do with affairs ? A shoemaker only knows how to make shoes.’ Soon philosophy in turn is abandoned. Cathe- • rine still speaks with respect of ‘good French authors,’ but she makes her choice, and, Voltaire excepted, she throws overboard all those of the eighteenth century. Diderot, d’Alembert, and Montesquieu himself, are sacrificed at one blow — TO GRIMM. • SeJ >^. 12, 1790. ‘ I must tell you the truth, the tone with you iiow is that of mere intemperance ; this is not the tone to make France illustrious. . . . What will the French do with their best writers, who almost all lived under Louis IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 251 XIV.? All — Voltaire himself — are royalists; they preach order and tranquillity, and all that is opposed to the system of this hydra with twelve hundred heads.’ The National Assembly is referred to more and more bitterly. On August 7th, 1 790, Chrapowicki notes in his journal : ‘ Said in presence of her Majesty, speaking of France : “ It is a meta- physical country ; every member of the assembly is a king, and every citizen is an animal.” Re- ceived with approbation.’ At the same time Catherine writes to Grimm — 27, 1790. ‘ In bed I reflected over things, and, among others, I thought that one reason why the Mathieu de Mont- morencys, the Noailles, etc., are so ill-taught and so base in spirit that they are among the first promoters of the decree abolishing the nobility ... is that the schools of the Jesuits have been abolished among you: whatever you may say, those scamps looked well after the morals and tastes of the young people, and what- ever is best in France came out of their schools.^ ^ Jan . 13, 1791* ‘One never knows if you are living in the midst of the murders, carnage, and uproar of the den of thieves v/ho have seized upon the government of France, and who will soon turn it into Gaul as it was in the time of Caesar. But Caesar put them down ! When will this Caesar come.^ Oh, come he will, you need not doubt.’ ^May2Z, 1791. ‘ The best of possible constitutions is worth nothing when it makes more people unhappy than happy, when brave and honest folk have to drudge, and only the rogues are in clover, because their pockets are filled, and nobody punishes them.' Observe, however, with what moderation 252 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Catherine is still capable, at this period, of dis- cussing one of the revolutionary principles most repugnant to her. Her letter of June 30th, 1791, to the Prince de Ligne may be given in evi- dence — ‘ I think that the Academies ought to offer a first prize for the question : What do honour and worth, synonyms dear to heroic ears, become in the mind of an active citizen under a jealous and suspicious government, which proscribes all distinction, while nature itself has given to the intelligent man a pre-eminence over the fool, and courage is founded on the sentiment of the force of the body or of the head ? Second prize for the question : Are honour and worth really needful } And if so, surely one should not restrain the desire of emulation, and clog it with an insup- portable enemy, equality.’ But soon she is carried away by more violent feelings — 'Sept. I, 1791. ‘If the French Revolution takes in Europe, there will come another Gengis or Tamerlane to restore it to reason : that is what I prophesy, and be sure it will come true, but it will not be in my time, nor, I hope, in that of M. Alexandre.’ When the news of the death of Louis XVI. reaches her, Catherine, as we have mentioned, is cut to the heart ; she betakes herself to bed, in a sort of fever, and she cries to her confidant — 'Feb. I, 1793. ‘The very name of France should be exterminated ! Equality is a monster. It would fain be king ! ’ This time the holocaust is complete. Voltaire IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 2S3 is sacrificed with the rest. And in the words and writing of the Empress there are almost savage calls to vengeance, the most extravagant projects of repression — ' Feb . 15, 1794. ‘ I propose that all the Protestant powers should embrace the Greek religion, to save themselves from the irreligious, immoral, anarchical, abominable, and diabolical plague, enemy of God and of thrones ; it is the sole apostolic and truly Christian religion — an oak with wide-spreading roots.’ Thus, after Caesar, she calls for Tamerlane and his exterminating sword; after the Jesuits, a long-bearded pope, who will bring the lost peoples into the safe fold of the Orthodox Church. Is the Caesar for whom she calls, he whom France and Europe have indeed felt? Yes and no. This Caesar she did not at first perceive. In is evidently dreaming of some officer of justice. _coming from without — some Brunswick. It is only later on that her point of view changes, becomes clearer, and then, it must be admitted, she comes very near the truth — touches it almost. Catherine sees Napoleon before he has ap- peared ; she points to him, describes his charac- teristics — ‘ If France is to coTne out of this alive,’ she writes, February 1 1, 1794, ‘she will be more vigorous than ever ; she will be meek and obedient as a lamb ; but it will need a man both great and bold, a man above his contemporaries, and perhaps above the age. Is he born? Is he not ? Will he come ? All depends on that. If he is found, he will arrest the last downfall, and 254 CA THERINE IT. OF RUSSIA that will be arrested whenever he is found, in France or elsewhere.’ The men of the Revolution who preceded Napoleon all shared in the indignation of the Empress, and in the severity of her judgments. Lafayette is now called ‘the big booby.’ Mira- beau is at first better treated. The praises showered on his tardy loyalism in the Gazette de St.-P^tersbourg show that the relations of the tribune with the Russian Legation at Paris were not unknown, nor yet the services that were" looked for from him. But, after his death, Catherine’s personal opinion is emphatically ex- pressed in her letters to Grimm — ‘ Mirabeau was the colossus or monster of our time ; in any other he would have been avoided, detected, imprisoned, hanged, or broken on the wheel.’ And three days afterwards — ‘ I do not like the honours paid to Mirabeau, and I do not understand the why or wherefore, unless it be to encourage wickedness and all the vices. Mirabeau merits the esteem of Sodom and Gomorrha.’ She retracts, too, her admiration for Necker — ‘ I agree with the views of M. F. on Malet du Pan and on that bad and foolish Necker : to me they are not merely hatefDl, but mere bores and chatterboxes.’ She is not more tender towards the Duke of Orleans — ‘ I hope that no Bourbon will ever again bear the name of Orleans, after the horror that I feel towards the last who bore it.’ As for the Abbe Sieges, she settles his account IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 255 at once : ‘ I subscribe to the hanging of the Abbe Sieges.’ It is but just to say that the Revolutionaries give her back her own. Volney returns the gold medal which the Empress has formerly bestowed on him. Sylvain Marechal, in his Jtigement Dernier des Rois, depicts the Empress in gro- tesque hand-to-hand conflict with the Pope, who throws his tiara at her head, after which she is swallowed up with ail her accomplices by a volcano that opens under her feet. The Moni- teur is not always amiable towards her. Nevertheless, it must be noted that, for a long time, Catherine, while severely condemning the revolutionary movement, does not, in Russia or elsewhere, set on foot against it any act of direct repression. She remains a passive, and in some sort disinterested, spectator of passing events. Her whole attitude seems to .say that all these things have no concern for her ; that, whatever may happen, she has nothing to fear for herself or for the empire. At bottom, she is probably convinced of it to the last. Only it happens that the combinations, or we might better say the improvisations, of her policy come to impose upon her convictions. The precise epoch when she decides to abandon her inaction sufficiently indicates her reasons for doing so : it is the moment when, having settled affairs with Turkey and Sweden, she judges the hour come to inter- fere in Poland, and to put her hand to the master- work of her reign. The French Revolu- tion then appears in her eyes as one of those propitious ‘conjunctions ’ which, with conjectures and circumstances, make up, for her, the whole CATHERINE II. CF RUSSIA 256 of politics. A dialogue with her secretary Chrapowicki, December 14, 1791, gives clear utterance to her view in this respect — ^ ‘ I am doing all I can to get the courts of 'Berlin and Vienna to concern themselves with French affairs.’ ‘ They are not very active.’ ‘ No. The court of Berlin goes forward, but that of Vienna remains behind. They do not see my point. Am I wrong ? There are reasons that one cannot say openly. I wish them to become concerned in the French affairs in order to leave me elbow-room. I have many undertakings to be achieved. I would have them occupied so that they may leave my way clear.’ And immediately Catherine sets the tocsin ringing. Up to the present she has been content to publish in Paris, through her minister Simo- line (in August 1 790) a ukase commanding all her subjects to quit France, in order that more of them should not think to imitate the example of the young Count Alexander Strogonof, who, with his tutor, had joined a revolutionary club. But it had not occurred to her to interdict in her empire the incendiary publications coming from the banks of the Seine. Russia remained the sole country in Europe open to the circulation of tlie papers printed at Paris. One number of the Moni- teur had been confiscated, because it enlarged somewhat too explicitly on the score of the Grand Duke and different personages of the court. From that day Catherine examined every number before authorising the distribution. She soon came across one where she herself, in her turn, WEAS AND PRINCIPLES 257 was very hardly treated : she was described as ‘the Messalina of the North.’ ‘That concerns no one but myself,’ she said proudly, and ordered its distribution. She tolerated the presence in St. Petersburg of the brother of Marat, who, while condemning the sanguinary furies of the other, did not conceal his republican views. Tutor in the house of Count Salty kof, he often comes to court with his pupil. It is only in 1792 that he change s his name, and takes that of Boudri. Then, in truth, all around him changes : the Empress embarl:s in the anti-revolutionary campaign, at first without much enthusiasm, purely as a political manoeuvre, but more and more sincerely, and more and more passionately too, entering little by little into the part she has wished to play, and adopting as her own those ideas, sentiments, and instincts. Not content with attacking the revolutionary spirit in France J and among the French, she pursues it in Russia, 1 among the Russians themselves, which is really \_doing it more honour than it deserves.'; In regard to France she draws up, in 1792, a memorandum on the means of restoring the monarchy. It must be said that she does not manifest much common-sense in the project. She imagines that a force of ten thousand men, marching from end to end of the country, would suffice to the task. The cost would only be ^500,000, which could be borrowed at Genoa. France, once handed back to its king, would return the amount. In regard to the Frenchmen imbued with the revolutionary spirit, w'ho might be found in her dominions, she concocts the famous ukase of February 3, 1793, which constrains them as8 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA under threat of immediate expulsion, to take an oath, of which the terms could not have been better imagined by a tribunal of inquisitors. Nor does she treat her subjects with more in- dulgence. To ward them off from the contagion of Jacobinism, she has recourse to means which she could not have sufficiently scorned at the commencement of her reign. Learning the choice that had been made of Prozorofski for the post of Governor of Moscow, Patiomkine writes to his imperial friend — ‘You have taken out of your arsenal the most ancient piece of artillery, which will certainly shoot in the direction in which you set it, for it has no motion of its own ; but beware lest it covers with blood for ever the name of your Majesty.’ Prozorofski and his collaborators of Moscow and St. Petersburg, Arharof, Chechkofski, and Pestel, seemed, in the vigorous phrase of a Russian writer, ‘ to have risen into the light of day out of the torture-chambers of the Preo- brajenski Prikaz, already lost in the night of oblivion.’ The trial of the Muscovite publicist, Novikof, condemned to fifteen years’ imprison- ment for carrying on certain publications to which the Empress herself had formerly con- tributed, inaugurates a regime which justifies only too well the apprehensions of Patiom- kine. Catherine bears a grudge even against the high French cravats, covering the chin, which the dandies of St. Petersburg, Prince Borys Galitzine at their head, persist in wearing. We have endeavoured to present the notions inspired in Catherine by the great political and IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 259 social upheaval of the end of the eighteenth century. These notions, it is evident, were narrow. Catherine could not see that, under all its deplorable errors, its culpable mistakes, the movement that she sought to repress contained something noble, lofty, and generous. Perhaps mere intelligence could not suffice for the com- prehension of these things. What was wanted was a certain personal elevation of sentiment, which Catherine never possessed. In trying to fight with the Revolution, she seized her chance of stifling the last vestiges of national independence on the, banks of the Vistula: that was a matter of policy, and we may waive our judgment respecting it. But, the fight once at end in Poland, she was neither touched as a woman, nor impressed as a sovereign, by what made the glory of the expiring republic and its rehabilitation before posterity, by the last resist- ance of the vanquished, by the hero who personi- fied all its useless effort and its tragic destiny. Having summoned to St. Petersburg as a com- mon malefactor the vanquished soldier whom Michelet named ‘the last Knight of the West and the first Citizen of the East,’ whom Napoleon afterwards, at the height of his power, would have called to his aid, and who, in his Swiss shelter, was not to be dazzled by Napoleon, Catherine was not even curious to see him. She was content to abuse him. ‘ Kostiouchko ’ — she did not even know how to spell his name — ‘ has been brought here ; he is seen to be in every way a mere fool, quite beneath contempt. That is how shq judges the man. ‘ Ma pauvre bete de Kostiouchka,’ we read in another letter. 26 o CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA That is all the pity she can spare to the soldier who had fallen on the field of Macieiowice, the soldier in whose wounds the very soul of a great and noble people seemed to pass in one last cry of agony. Paul I., on reaching the throne, is said to have visited the ex-dictator in his prison, and, bending low before him, desired his pardon for his mother. Perhaps it is only a legend, and if so, so much the worse for the son of Catherine. At all events he set the prisoner free. Catherine had never thought of doing it We once heard a German, who to-day occupies a high position at Vienna, declare that, being cosmopolitan in his tastes, he liked every nation- ality equally, except one, and that his own ; for, said he, along with many good qualities, it had one defect which he disliked above all others, it did not know how to be generous. Tn one sense, and from this point of view, just or not, Catherine remained German. She knew how to give, sometimes even how to pardon, but she was utterly inaccessible to certain sentiments that awaken naturally in all true hearts at the sight of weakness, suffering, and misfortune. Her ideas, as we know them, did not allow her to appreciate a certain type of simple grandeur. Her own simplicity was all made of show and convention. She was always playing a part when she showed herself under this aspect. She was willing to come down from Olympus, and she even took pleasure in it, but Olympus and all its train must be not far off. This is why, in 1782, she refused the honour of receiving Franklin. ‘ I do not care for him,’ she said. IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 261 She did not understand him. In 1795 she did not understand Kosciuszko. Is it true that she ever echoed the one among all the kings her contemporaries whom she pro- fessed the most to scorn, Louis XV., by repeating in her way the famous saying ‘After me the deluge ’ ? ‘ Poslie mienia hot trava nie rosti (After me the grass may cease to grow) ’ she is said to have said at the end of her life. It may well be. But to arrive at that point, she had need to abjure all that made the true glory of her reign, all to which she owes to- day that immortality of which she had the sublime thirst. BOOK II THE SOVEREIGN CHAPTER I THE ART OF RULING I ' I LOVE the fallow land,’ wrote Catherine. ‘ I have said it a thousand times, I am good for nothing out of Russia.’ She thus proved the extreme lucidity of mind which permitted her, at least occasionally, to achieve this ^our de force — a just appreciation of her own merits. Prince Henry of Prussia, sent to St. Petersburg, as an act of gratitude, by his brother, and there study- ing the sovereign with a German’s resolution to get to the bottom of things, said one day to the Comte de Segur — ‘ She (Catherine) is made to shine, she is immortalised during her lifetime ; otherwise, she would no doubt shine much less ; but in her country she is more intelligent than all those about her. It is easy to be great on such a throne.’ Catherine did not fail to recognise one of the elements, and perhaps the most essential, of all her successes — luck. ‘ I have had nothing but good luck,’ she said frankly enough. How 262 THE ART OF RULING 263 indeed could she fail to see in the path of her life this indispensable factor of all prosperity ? In 1770 she copied with her own hand a note from her improvised admiral, the commandant-in- chief of her naval forces in the Levant, Alexis Orlof, who, though he had never till then seen a ship or a sailor, knew enough at the end of a week to see that those with whom he had been told to conquer ‘were not worth a pinch of salt.’ ‘ My hair stands on end as I think of these things,’ wrote Orlof. ‘ If we had to do with any but Turks, there would soon be an end of the fleet’ It is this fleet and its admiral that won the victory of Tchesme, shattering to atoms one of the finest fleets that Turkey had ever sent to sea. And in 1781 Catherine had already sent to Grimm the following rdsum^ of the history of her reign, set forth by her new secretary and factotum, Besborodko, in the fantastic form of an inventory : — Governments instituted according to the new form, 29 Towns built, 144 Treaties made, . ...... 30 Victories won, . 78 Notable edicts, decreeing laws, ... 88 Edicts on behalf of the people, . . . 123 Total . 492 Four hundred and ninety-two active measures! This astonishing piece of book-keeping, which betrays so naively all that there was of romantic, extravagant, childish, and very feminine, in the extraordinary genius that swayed Russia, and in some sort Europe, during thirty-four years, 264 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA will no doubt make the reader smile. It corre- sponds, however, truly enough, to a sum-total of great things accomplished under her direct inspiration. And all that, was it not really due to her good luck? No indeed! Prince Henry of Prussia is too severe, Catherine too modest, and we have proved it already in speaking of the character of the great sovereign. With such a character one generally puts something more than chance and success in the balance of human destinies, over which one is called to preside. Catherine put there, to begin with, remarkable qualities of tenue. On July 3, 1764, the envoy of Frederick, Comte de Solms, wrote to his master — ‘ On the part of the nation discontent and commotion, and much courage and firmness, at least in appearance, on the part of the Empress. She left here (Livonia) with an air of the greatest serenity and the most composed countenance, though, only two days before, there had been a mutiny in the army.’ — In another circumstance, the Prince de Ligne has noted — ‘ I was the only one to see that the last declara- tion on part of Turkey gave her only a quarter of an hour’s reflection on the instability of human things, and the uncertainty of success and glory. She left the room with the same air of serenity that she had before her courier had gone.’ Imposing on all the world, her friends as well as her enemies, by this attitude, Catherine can never be imposed upon by man or thing, and is never put out of countenance. In 1788, at the moment when the Swedish war broke out, there THE ART OF RULING 265 was a terrible lack of' men, both in the army and in the government, but especially in the army. The Count of Anhalt presents himself, backed by his European reputation as a soldier, and offers his services. He is received with open arms. But he demands the rank of general-in-chief, and the supreme command. Catherine refuses. The German condottiere, surprised and indignant, de- clares that he will go and plant cabbages. ‘ Look after them well,’ replies the Empress calmly. To increase the prestige that she already has, she does not disdain, from time to time, to have recourse to certain artifices, to certain effects of upose and arrangement. / The Comte de Segur, on presenting his credentials, perceives ‘some- thing theatrical ’ in the behaviour of the Empress ; but this ‘ something ’ has such an effect upon the new-comer that he forgets the formal speech he has prepared beforehand, and is obliged to improvise another. One of his predecessors, yet more overcome, was unable, if we may believe Catherine, to get beyond the words, ‘ The King my master,’ which he repeated three times in succession. At the third repetition Catherine put an end to his misery by saying that she well knew the good-will of his master towards her. But she looked upon him, from that moment, as a fool, though he had the rep utation in Paris of being a man of ready wit. "^e was indulgent only to her servants. It should be said that she had the right to be exigent in regard to those who had to speak before her, J for, as the Prince de Ligne has observed, she had ‘ the art of listening,’ ‘ Such was her presence of mind,’ he tells us, ‘that 18 266 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA she seemed to be listening, even when she was thinking of something else.’ The Prince de Ligne adds that nevertheless his own Empress, Maria Theresa, had ‘ more charm and magic,’ Catherine manifests mor«.. authority. And she is careful to keep this side of her sovereign prestige intact. One day, at an official dinner, having to express some discontent with the envoy of a foreign power, she makes one of those scenes of which Napoleon, later on, was so fond. In the midst of her tirade she hears her secre- tary, Chrapowicki, observing in an undertone how much it is to be regretted that the ma- touchka loses her temper in this way. She stops short, changes the conversation, behaves most amiably to the end of dinner ; but on rising from table she goes straight to the in- terrupter : ‘ How dare you criticise in public what I say ! ’ Hei voice trembles with wrath, and the cup of coffee that she holds in her hand is in danger of falling to the ground. She puts down the cup without emptying it, and dismisses the unfortunate secretary. He thinks himself lost, and goes home expecting, at the very least, an order to set out for Siberia. A messenger comes to summon him before her Majesty. Catherine is still much excited, and overwhelms him with reproaches. He falls on his knees. ‘ Come,’ says the Empress, presenting him with a snuff-box set with diamonds, ‘ keep this, and when you have any observations to make in public on what I say or do, hold your tongue and take a pinch of snuff. The reminder may be of use to me.’ With such command over herself, it is certain that she must exercise great command over THE ART OF RULING 267 Others/ It is indeed enormous, and all the traits of her character, of her temperament, and of her mind, serve to strengthen it. Her attitude impresses and fascinates, her energy, her fire, her youthful ‘go,’ her confidence, her audacity, her verve, her way of presenting things to others as they present themselves to her, that is to say, on the brightest side, her scorn of danger and difficulty, made up of a good half of ignorance and a good third of adventurous infatuation, her day-dreams, that sort of gorgeous hallucination in which she lives, and through which the sense of real things comes to her ; all that aids her in driving forward good and bad, wise and foolish alike, driving them forward as a horseman does his horse, now carressed and now flogged, spurred, shaken, and in some sort borne along by the effort of a will w hich increases tenfold the play of the muscles.^ Read the correspondence of the sovereign with her generals in the first Turkish war, Galitzine and Roumiantsof. Galit- zine is utterly incompetent, Roumiantsof is an accomplished soldier : she scarcely notices the difference. They must both march ; they must both beat the Turks ; it is impossible that they should not do that. The Turks, what are they } A herd, not an army. And then, ‘Europe is ob- serving us.’ One seems to hear Napoleon be- side the Pyramids. She thanks Roumiantsof for a Turkish poignard that he has sent her, but the capture of two ‘ hospodars ’ would please her better. Nor is that enough : ‘ I beg you to be good enough to send me the Vizier himself, and, if God wills, his Highness the Sultan himself.’ She will do all to render the victory easy : ‘ She 268 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA is setting fire to the Turkish empire at all four corners,’ She sends word to her Minister of War, so that he may hold himself in readiness: ‘ Monsieur, monsieur, I want plenty of cannons. . . . What am I to do if the cannons are dear ? ’ One would take her for a fine lady ordering a further supply of dresses from a good maker. She adds: ‘I have now -army at Cuban, an army acting against the Tur ks, an army ag ainst the brainl ess Po les ; I am about to collar the Swedes,'^^ T have three more soumatohi (brawls) in petto, that I dare not avow. Send me, if you can without attracting notice, a map of the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, and then pray God : God will arrange all.’ But now, in September 1771, one of the lieu- tenants of Roumiantsof, General Essen, is de- feated under the walls of Giourgi. It is nothing. ‘ Where there has been water, there is water still,’ says the Russian proverb. The Russian proverb is right. ‘ God favours us, but some- times he punishes us in order that we may not become too proud.’ We must go ahead, and all will be well. Roumiantsof goes ahead, he leaves the right bank of the Danube. Victory! cries Catherine. Quick, a pen, to send the good news to Voltaire, that the good news may spread through all Europe I Alas I in obeying his sove- reign, Roumiantsof has attempted too much. He is obliged to beat a retreat. He excuses himself on account of the state of the army. He ima- gines that he has enemies about the Empress who have purposely left him w'ithout enough food and ammunition. ‘ He does not know what he is saying ! ’ Catherine has never heard that he had THE ART OF RULING 269 enemies capable of doing him a mischief with her. That would be impossible. ‘She has no people about her to whisper in her ear. . . . She will have none of such folk. . . . She judges those capable of doing well by what they do.’ No doubt Roumiantsofs army is weak. Especially (a little cut in passing) as it must have suffered in the marches and counter-marches from one bank of the Danube to the other. But the Empress cannot forget the inscription en- graved on the obelisk commemorating the vic- tory won by Roumiantsof at Kagoul : it declares that he had only 1 7,000 men under his command. With his skill and energy he can renew this feat of arms ; provided always that he does not allow himself to be discouraged. Forward! Forward! II This correspondence discovers yet another' superiority in Catherine i l ier skill in the m anage- mentofjpen. In that ^e is simply marvellous. She employs all the resources of a trained diplo- matist, of a subtle psychologist, and of a woman who knows the art of fascination ; she employs them together or apart, she handles them with unequalled maestria. If it is true that she some- times takes her lovers for generals and statesmen, it is no less true that she treats on occasion her generals and statesmen as lovers. When the sovereign can do nothing, the Circe intervenes. If it avails nothing to command, to threaten, or to punish, she becomes coaxing and wheedling. To- wards the soldiers that she sends to death, bidding them c ’ ■ win for her victory, she has delicate 270 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA attentions, flattering forethought, adorable little way^ After the battle of Kinburn (October having to send quantities of ribbon to the heroes of the day, she arranges them with her own hands, in a basket of flowers, which she sends to Patiomkine. In September 1789 she sends to Prince von Nassau- Siegen, the new commander of the fleet, two warm dressing-gowns, ‘like those I sent last year to Marshal Prince Patiomkine before Otchakof, and which were of great service to him, as he himself assured me.’ She flatters the literary ambitions of the Comte de Segur in absolutely insisting on putting his Coriolanus on the stage, and, in the course of the performance, she seizes both his hands to make him applaud himself. She even gives out that she knows the piece by heart, reciting aloud a dozen lines, where, it is true, she has caught a political allusion that she wishes to emphasise. Should fortune smile upon the efforts she has thus provoked and stimulated, she is profusely grateful ; honours, pensions, gifts of money, of peasants, of land, rain upon the artisans of her glory. But she does not abandon those who have had the misfortune to be unlucky. In June 1790 Prince von Nassau-Siegen is ingloriously defeated. She immediately writes to him — ‘ I hope you know me well enough to be sure that the gossip of the town, which has apparently reached you, will have no effect upon me. I know perfectly your zeal ; I do it justice ; I most sin- cerely share your mortification ; I am distressed to hear that it has even affected your health. . . . Mon Dieu, who is there, then, that has not had great reverses in his life.^ Have not the greatest THE ART OF RULING 271 captains had their unlucky days. The late King of Prussia was really only great after a great reverse. . . . Remember, Prince, your successes in the South and North, rise above these untoward events, and go forward against the enemy, instead of asking me to appoint another commander for the fleet. I cannot do so now without giving occasion to your enemies. 1 lay too great store by the services you have rendered me not to support you, especially at a time when you are suffering, as you tell me, in body and mind.’ She supports him, in fact, against all. As, in his endeavour to retire from the position, he appeals to the unfavourable state of affairs, she replies that it will be cruel of him towards her if he cannot remedy them. ‘ I have always liked to take an interest in the affairs of those who looked after mine.’ And, as the clamour of court and town still continue against the defeated general, she writes to him again — ‘You acted upon a plan approved by me and upon my orders, and, coming from the supreme authority, they could not have been submitted to any further opinion, since, as long as I live, I shall never allow what I have ordered and approved of in regard to service to be called in question by a living soul ; nor does any one here attempt to do so. You are right, and you must be right, since I say that you are right. That is an “ aristocratic ” reason, no doubt ; but it can be no otherwise without turning every- thing upside down.’ And it is always thus. In 1794 General Ige’lstrbm, having been surprised at Warsaw by a popular outbreak, is suspended from office ; but. 272 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA one day, as those about the Empress are intent upon running him down, she raises her voice : ‘ Silence, gentlemen ; do not forget that he served me for thirty years, and that I owe to him the peace with Sweden.’ A fragment of conversation with Count Nicolas Roumiantsof, the son of the hero of the first Turkish war, which is reported to us by Gretch, shows, on the other hand, the multiplicity of means which she has at her command, and which she uses to obtain the aid of those whose devotion is likely to be useful to her. She asks the Count if he thinks it easy to govern men. ‘ I think there is nothing more difficult,’ replies Roumiantsof. ‘ Come now, you have only to observe three principles : the first is to act s o that people .fancy they are do i ng of their own j .ccord-whaL^ujTjake them do.’ ‘That is quite enough,’ interrupts ^umiantsof. Admiral Tchitchagof relates that his brother, who was gentleman of the bedchamber, had one day the misfortune to be late in arriving. The Empress observed it, and did not fail to com- ment on this negligence, but it was in the form of eulogies heaped on the father of Tchitchagof, who, for fifty years, never once failed to be at his post. Those who were present imagined that the young man was receiving the most extraordinary signs of imperial favour, until he confessed to them afterwards that he had never been so miserable and confused. ‘ I make it a point to praise aloud, and to complain quietly,’ said Catherine. And is it not easy to imagine the effect that a word from her lips, a gesture of her hand, the slightest mark of satisfaction or of dissatisfaction, THE ART OF RULING 273 coming from her, would have over the simple and impressionable people with whom she was for the most part brought in contact ? T chitchagof relates that a General Vorontsof, Commandant of the Post of Revel, whom he had known well, was struck by an attack of apoplexy, of which he died, at the mere idea of having incurred the sovereign’s displeasure. A non-commissioned officer named Stepan Chirai, sent to the Empress by Souvarof with the news of the taking of a fortress, returned with the Cross of St. Vladimir of the fourth class, which the Empress herself had pinned on his chest. Thirty years later the Emperor Nicholas, on the day of his coronation, thought to advance him a class. He returned the new cross: he could not make up his mind to give up the one that he had received from the hands of the inatoicchka ! Ill Ccatherine’s art of ruling was not, however, without its shortcomings, some of which were due to the mere fact of her sex, whose depen- dences and weaknesses she was powerless to overcome^ ‘Ah!’ she cried one day, ‘ if heaven had only granted me breeches instead of petti- coats, I could do anything. It is with eyes and arms that one rules, and a woman has only ears.’ The petticoats were not solely responsible for her difficulties. £'We have already referred to a defect AVhich bore " heavily upon the conduct of affairs \ during her reign : this great leader of men, who \ i knew so well how to make use of them, did j \not know how to choose them. Her judgment, 274 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA usually so accurate and penetrating, her lucidity, great as it was, deserted her on this point. * She could not see in others either the qualities or the defects that she discovered and analysed in herselC \jvith so extraordinary a clearness of sight. There was here a gap in her intelligence, due probably, in part at least, to the influence of her tempera- ment. It seems that her vision of men in general was disturbed, in this respect, by the breath of passion which influenced all her life.'! The general, the statesman, of whom she had neea, she seemed to see only through the male whom she liked or disliked. What she looked for first, in the face of any functionary whatever, was the romantic side, the more or less attractive exterior. That she took Patiomkine for an able man may be excused ; he was perhaps a madman, but he had the madness of genius. He belonged to the category of men who are called forces of nature. And this forcer^^ let loose upon immensity in this ‘fallow land’ for which Catherine felt that she had been born, had its value. But after Patiomkine came Zoubof. He was a mere puppet : Catherine took him for a man of genius. The contrary also happened to her. Rou- miantsof having presented before her one of his lieutenants. General Weissmann, whom he judged capable of taking his place in case of need, Catherine conversed with him on three occasions, and, having turned him this way and that, ‘ came to the conclusion that he was an absolute fool.’ The wretched man shortly afterwards rushed upon his death in the battle of Koutchouk- Kajnardji. In the opinion of all competent to judge, he was beyond compare as a soldier, THE ART OF RULING 275 and valiant among the valiant. One historian has called him ‘the Achilles of the Russian army.^ These mis take_s ^-Qf-4u dgnien t were frequent. But Catherine did more than this, and worse. With the obstinacy which characterised her, and the infatuation that her successes gave her, she came little by little to translate this capital defect into a parti pris, to formulate it as a system ; one man was worth another, in her eyes, so long as he was docile and prompt to obey. She had in this respect maxims which might well disconcert her admirers. ‘Tell me,’ she wrote to Grimm, ‘if ever sovereign has more absolutely chosen his min- isters according to the voice of public opinion than Louis XVI. ? And we have seen what happened. According to me, no country has a dearth of men. Don’t try to look all round about you, try to use what you have at hand. It is always said of us that we have a dearth of men ; yet in spite of all, things come right. Peter I. bad the same, and knew not how to read or write ; well, did not things succeed ? Ergo, there is no such thing as a dearth of men ; there is a multi- tude, but you must make them move : all will go well if you have this other to make them move. What does your coachman do, soiiffre-douleur, when you are boxed up in your coach t A good heart goes everywhere ; because this or that is narrow and limited, the master is not.’ And again : ‘ Assuredly men of worth are never lacking, for it is affairs which make men\ and men which make affairs ; I have never tried \ to look for them, and I have always found close ) 276 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA at hand the men who have served me, and I have for the most part been well served.’ This does not hinder her from one day making this reflection, which she puts in a letter to the Prince de Ligne — * Ah, Prince, who knows better than I do that there are clerks who are ignorant that a maritime town has a port ? ’ And this other — ‘ It is not ideas which are wanting; it is in the execution, it is in the application, that things often go awry.’ This does not prevent her, in 1774, from being on the point of going to Moscow herself in order to put down Pougatchef ; for, since the death of Bibikof, she knows not who can cope with him. She summons a council : Gregory Orlof declares that he has slept badly and has not an idea in his head ; Razoumofski and Galitzine are silent ; Patiomkine is for the man whom she chooses ; Panine alone has the courage to give advice, and his advice is that the Empress should appeal to his brother, General Panine, whose services she has long neglected, thinking that another would do equally well in his place. The peril being urgent, she submits, sacrifices her amour-propre, and Panine saves the crown and the empire. In 1788, after the first en- counter with the Swedes, she court-martials three captains of frigates ; the next day she writes to Patiomkine : ‘ They deserve the gallows, but there is nobody else to put in their place, unless he falls from the sky.’ With the multiplicity of her enterprises, and with her ideas on this point, which are but the THE ART OF RULING 277 expression of her caprices, she uses up a terrible number of men. Her maxim, t hat * affair.? m ake men ’ leads her to multiply to excess the number of functionaries. According to one testimony, if the two capitals and a few other larger towns are left out of the question, there is one functionary to every ten inhabitants in the provinces. And her idea that one man is worth as much as another causes her, for a mere nothing, for a word that offends her, for a cast of countenance that she finds unpleasing, or even without motive, for the pleasure of change and the delight of having to do with some one new, as she avows naively in a letter to Grimm, to set aside, disgraced or merely cashiered, one or another of her most devoted servants. In 1788 Rou- miantsof, the greatest warrior whom Russia pro- duced before Souvarof, is still alive, and well able to take the command, and Alexis Orlof, the hero of Tchesme, is burning to renew his old exploits. He has had a certain apprentice- ship to the trade, which he entered into in 1770, and a name that the enthusiasm of Catherine herself has surrounded with such an aureole, that his reputation is worth in itself a fleet or an army. But both the one and the other, Roumiantsof and Orlof, have long been i sacrificed to Patiomkine, and Catherine is re- duced to seeking generals and admirals in Eng- land, in Holland, in Germany. At last she finds Nassau-Siegen, who, after having enchanted her by his matador airs and stage costumes, ere long costs her a fleet, and the shame of a disaster without precedent in the history of the young , Russian navy. 278 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA The exlxayagant optimi sm, which is part of the character of Catherine, and which colleagnes like Nassau and Patiomkine assiduously encour- age, has also to be observed. The story of the scene-painting on canvas, which, during the visit to the Crimea, is said to have represented the absent villages, has been disproved. It is not so very far from the truth, on the testimony even of those who have contested its reality. The Prince de Ligne is among these ; he observes, nevertheless, that Catherine, never going on foot, could see no more than what was shown her, and imagined frequently that a town was built and inhabited, ‘ when this town had no streets, the streets no houses, and the houses no roofs, doors, or windows.’ The Comte de Langeron, who was afterwards governor of these very provinces, and whose memoirs have not the slightest trace of retrospective hostility, goes even further. A proclamation of the governor of Harkof, Vassili Tchertkof, issued at the same time to announce to the inhabitants the coming of the sovereign, and to instruct them in their duties on this solemn occasion, is equally characteristic in the same way. It is severely ordered that the in- habitants are to dress themselves in their best clothes when her Majesty is expected to pass by. The girls are to have their hair carefully combed out and adorned with flowers. They are also to strew flowers on the Empress’s path, and all the population is to ‘express its delight by appropriate gestures and attitudes.’ The houses on the route are to be repainted, the roofs repaired, the doors and windows decked with festoons, and, as far as possible, with rugs THE ART OF RULING 279 pleasing to the eye. It is forbidden for any one to get drunk, or to present to her Majesty the smallest request ; this under penalty of the knout and hard labour. The local magistrates will see to it in addition that the passage of the sovereign does not raise the price of food. Prince Chtcher- batof relates that at Moscow all the beggars had been put outside, so that the Empress should not see them. ‘The Empress has looked, but not seen (vidiela i ne vidala),’ he adds, with an un- translatable play on words. This is how she came to be convinced that ‘ there were no hungry people in Russia.’ She gives that assurance one day to Grimm ! ■' But the conquest and the arrangement of the Tauric peninsula were, in the hands of Patiom- kine, nothing but a colossal faerie mounted by that prodigious improvisatore and disappearing with him. It was difficult to decide, on seeing him at work, which to admire the most : his extraordinary activity and the fertility of his imagination, or the incredible naivetd with which both Catherine and himself take their creation, part madness, part fancy, part childish mystifica- tion, absolutely mi sdrieux. A desert is to be transformed into a cultivated and v/ell- populated land, inhabited by industry and the arts, and this is to be done in a few years, as if by magic. Patiomkine sets to work. He plants forests in the Steppes, imports the seeds of all known [vegetables, trains vines, cultivates mulberry-trees ifor silk-worms, builds manufactories, theatres, palaces, barracks, and cathedrals. He covers the peninsula with magnificent towns. The history of these towns is astounding. The examples 28 o CATHERINE II. of RUSSIA which America offers to-day to our astonishment, in the same order of instantaneous improvisa- tions, are outdone. In 178a a site is wanted for the capital of the province, which is to be named ‘ lekatierinoslaf ’ — glory of Catherine. Two months after the site has been marked out, there is already a project for a u niver sity, open not only to natives, but also to the strangers who are expected to flock from all the corners of Europe. Soon an army of workmen appears on the right bank of the Dnieper, at the spot chosen, not far from a humble Tartar village called Kaidak ; Lieutenant Sinielnikof, who has charge of them, receives 200,000 roubles for the first cost, and the work commences. The town is to extend along the river about 25 versts, and to cover 300 square versts with streets 200 feet wide. There is to be a park, with a botanical gardeflr^hrpSnd, and different other embellish- ments. In the middle is to bo the palace of the Prince of Taurida, Patiomkine the magnificent. Around are the buildings apportioned to the different services of the administration ; then come the dwellings of the workmen employed in building the town, the workshops, the manu- factories, the houses of the coming population. Twelve large factories, one of them for silk fabrics, are planned, and the funds for establish- ing them partly collected. A town-hall in the style of the old basilicas, a great bazaar in the style of the Propylaeum, a Bourse, a theatre, a Conservatoire of music, finally a cathedral on the model of St. Peter’s, but larger, will be erected in various parts of the city, suitably chosen. The materials are ready, Patiomkine declares. In THE ART OF RULING 281 addition, professors are already summoned for the university and the conservatoire. The cele- brated Sarti is to direct the latter. For the chair of history in the university a Frenchman named Guyenne is appointed, a soldier by profession. But these details must not be looked into too closely. An observatory too is thought of, and a sort of Quartier Latin for the students. Such are the plans ; now see the results. The palace.-Q£ JEatiomkine is built of conservatories, one for pine-apples, another for laurels and orange-trees, others again for pomegranates, dates, etc. The silk factory is also built. It costs 240,000 roubles, and works for two years, after which various reasons, the principal of which is a scarcity of material, bring it to an end. The silk-worm industry, for which a manager has been brought from abroad at a considerable salary, produces a maximum of twenty pounds of silk a year! The remainder of the great city exists only in fancy. But lekatierinoslaf had, all the same, a chance of becoming in time a little provincial town. ^ Kherson, of which Joseph II. laid the first stone in 1787, saying that after him Catherine had laid the last, did not even arrive at this modest result. In other parts of the empire the rapid erection of administrative or industrial centres ran. similar risks. In 1787 the poet Dierjavine, accompanying the governor of Petrosavodsk in a journey undertaken for the inauguration of a town which had been appointed chief town of the district, never reached the goal, he tells us : the town existed only on paper ! Nevertheless the Crimea was conquered and began to be populated. 19 . 282 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA ‘Such, in Russia,’ said the Comte de Segur, ‘ is the double magic of absolute power and of passive obedience, that nobody murmurs, even though in want of everything, and things go on, although nothing has been prepared or looked after in advance.’ ‘ Things went on,’ in fact, from one end to the other of Catherine’s reign, and ‘passive obe- dience,’ no doubt, had a large share in it. The adventure of Sutherland, the English banker at St. Petersburg, is well known. One day the chief of police, Ryleief, presents himself, and, \ with all sorts of excuses, communicates to him an order of the sovereign which concerns him, an ^order which he cannot but deplore, despite his respect for the will of her Majesty, but which it is out of his power not to execute. In a word, he has been ordered to stuff unfortunate banker. A Conceive of the poor man’s fright ! Happily the mistake is discovered in time. The Empress had spoken of stuffing a favourite dog that she had lost, and the English name had put Ryleief on the wronof track. The English Dr. Dimsdale o o ^ relates, in the notes he has left on his residence in Russia, that having wished to take the lymph for inoculating the Empress from a child belong ing to poor moujiks, the mother opposed it : according to the general belief, it meant the death of the child. But the father intervened : ‘ If the Empress c/dered us to cut off both the child’s legs, should we not do it t ’ Dimsdale adds nevertheless another characteristic. The sick child was placed in an overheated room, in a fetid atmosphere, the opening of a window according to the parents, meaning certain death. TBi. ^xj.\. X \yj. RULING 283 But Dimsdale produced a rouble : he could open as much as he liked. The anecdote reveals another agent, universal and all-powerful, which the ways of the country put in the hands of Catherine. She did not fail to use it. She used it vigorously and to excess, after her usual style. She gave much, and let even more be taken. The waste of money in every branch of the administration was enormous. One day Catherine, in the midst of a violent headache, could not suppress a smile : ‘ She did not wonder that she was suffering so much, for she had seen in the accounts that she used a poud (over thirty pounds) of powder every day for her hair ! ’ This detail enables one to judge of the rest. But the accounts that Harris sent to the English court, with the detail of ‘tens of thou- sands of pounds sterling’ used by his French colleagues in corrupting the functionaries of the Empress, were not less fanciful. The Baron de Breteuil was the sole French minister at this epoch who was empowered to employ in this manner a considerable sum, to the extent of a million of francs ; and he never made use of the permission. His successors had something to do to obtain a few ten thousand pounds intended for the buying over of certain influences or certain secret documents. And these attempts, con- sidered even at Versailles as useless or dangerous, had not as a rule any success’ during the reign of Catherine. A functionary of the Empress, who had, or appeared to have, a great fancy for a fine coach made in Paris, thought better of it before he had received the present, and informed the sovereign, who dictated to him herself an ironi- 284 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA cally-polite letter of refusal. After the Baron de Breteuil, in the long series of agents repre- senting the French policy who succeeded him at St. Petersburg, the Comte de Segur was the only one who succeeded in exercising any particular influence, and money, which he would have found it very difficult to raise, had no share in this. From 1762 to the death of Catherine, them was only one great corrupting influence in her\ empire — and that was herself. It is certain that jl she used it mainly for the good of the empire, as > she conceived it, and that she found in it the^ resources for the accomplishment of great things. ) It is not less certain that morality had to suffer/ for it, and that the influence of ideas and customs thus implanted in the national genius, was destined to exercise on its later development a long and untoward action. We shall now endeavour to p?''s rapidly in review the results obtained by means of all these resources as they were wielded in the hands of the sovereign. CHAPTER II HOME POLICY I Happy is the nation without a history: from 1775 the Russian people counted, in point of view of the home policy, among the happy nations. After the great effort which she had .to HOME POLICY 283 make in putting down the revolt of Pougatchef, Catherine found herself at first fatigued, then disenchanted, and finally absorbed by her foreign ( policy, by the conquest of the Crimea, the second / Turkish war, the second and third division of i Poland, and the anti-revolutionary campaign, \ Up to 1775 she asserted, and had need to assert, J her exuberant activity in every direction. She had first to defend her throne against a series of more or less threatening attempts. A series of repressive measures, more or less calculated to add to her glory, corresponded with them. In October 1762 a certain Peter Hrouchtchof was accused, with the brothers Simon, Ivan, and Peter Gourief, of having plotted for the re- establishment on the throne of Ivan of Brunswick, shut up since 1741 in prison. Having been condemned, together with his accomplices, to transportation to the government of Oremburg, Hrouchtchof' took part in 1772 in the revolt of the exiles in Siberia, under the leadership of the famous Beniowski. He succeeded in escaping, after a series of romantic adventures, reached the west of Europe by way of America, and served in the French army in the rank of captain. This conspiracy, true or false, for the reality of the criminal intentions imputed to the accused seems not to have been clearly established, has often been confused with another later event, in which the Princess Dachkof was compromised. In May 1763, during Catherine’s visit to Moscow on the occasion of her coronation, fresh arrests for high treason were commanded by the Empress. But the unhappy Ivan, languishing in his prison, was not the cause this time. It was quite 286 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA another affair. There had been a rumour that Catherine intended to marry Gregory Orlof. Some of those who had taken the most active part in the elevation of the new Czarina, Fedor Hitrovo at their head, judged the interests of the empire endangered by this real or imaginary project. They formed a plot to hinder the Empress from carrying it out, or, in case of her persisting, to kill the favourite. Hitrovo, the first to be arrested, named as accomplices, Paninel Hliebof, Tieplof, Passek, the greater part o| the heroes of the 12th of July, and the Princes Dachkof. He afterwards contradicted his as^rtions, and declared that he had only had to do wiith more obscure friends, the two brothers Roslavlef and Lasounski. Princess Dachkof, on being e^amin^ed, declared proudly that she knew nothing in the matter, but that, if she had known anything, she would have kept silence just the same. Moreover, if the Empress wished to bring her head to the scaffold, after she had helped to set the crown on hers, she was prepared ! The affair had no very serious consequences. Hitrovo alone was exiled in the government of Orel. A ukase was also proclaimed in the streets of Moscow, to the sound of the drum, a ukase which was merely the repetition of an earlier act of Elizabeth’s government (June 5, 1757), by which it was forbidden to the inhabitants to occupy themselves with matters which did not concern them. The affairs of state in general were com- prised in the enumeration of subjects thus denoted. The interdiction was renewed in 1772. Almost at the same time, a priest, the Arch- bishop of Rostof, Arsene Matsieievitch, raised HOME POLICY 287 the standard of revolt in a much more audacious manner. The policy of C atherine in regard to the orthodox clergy (fid not TalTto give rise to well-established criticisms. On coming to the throne she had pronounced vigorously against the measures by which Peter III. haci brought about the disaffection, if not the active opposi- tion, of the church. She had reopened the private chapels, closed by order of the Czar, forbidden the performance of pagan plays at the theatre, reinforced the censorship of books ; finally, she had put an end to the .secularisation of ecclesiastical property. Suddenly she changed her mind, and revoked all these measures in protection of interests which she thought it no longer needful to consult. A part of the goods returned to their former possessors was the object of fresh claims. The clergy in general bowed the head, as they had clone before. Arsine alone rose in defence of the common rights thus outraged. He went so far as to introduce into the ritual certain new formulas which, under colour of menacing the enemies of the church, were levelled directly against the Empress. Arrested and brought before the sovereign, he broke out into language so violent that her Majesty was obliged to cover her ears. He was condemned to be degraded from his office, and shut up in a cloister, where he was employed, by express order, in the meanest work, in fetching water and chopping wood. Four years later, after a new attempt at revolt, he was removed from the cloister to a better-guarded prison. The fortress of Revel was selected in order that he might not be able to talk in Russian 288 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA with his keepers, who only understood Lithuanian, He changed his name, and called himself the peasant Andre Vral, that is to say, liar, or Brodi- g'iaguine, that is to say, brigand. He died in 1772. A year afterwards, a shopkeeper named Smoline renewed the protest of the unfortunate bishop against the infringement of the rights of the clergy. In a letter addressed to the Empress, and filled with the most virulent invectives, he openly accused the sovereign of having ap- propriated the goods of the church in order to distribute them to Orlof and other favourites. He ended with this apostrophe : ‘ Thou hast a heart of stone like Pharaoh. ... Of what chastise- ment art thou not worthy, thou who every day dost chastise robbers and brigands ! ’ Catherine proved that the mad creature calumniated her by showing him mercy. Smoline was only im- prisoned for five years, after which, at his own request, he was made a monk, and nothing more was heard of him. Nevertheless, in 1764, the death of Ivan of Brunswick had already added another stain of blood to that which the drama of Ropcha left on the dazzling horizon of the new reign. Ivan, it may be remembered, was the little Emperor of two years old, dethroned in 1741 by Elizabeth. Shut up at first with the rest of his family at Holmogory, on the White Sea, then, alone, in the fortress of Schlusselburg, he had grown up in the shadow of the dungeon. He was said to be weak-minded and to stutter ; but he had reigned, and such another act of violence as the one that had dethroned him might reinstate hirn on the throne : he remained a menace. He gave HOME POLICY 289 some anxiety to Voltaire himself, who foresaw that the philosophers would not find in him a friend. In September 1764 he disappeared. The incident has given rise to contradictory tales and comments, in which history is quite at a loss. To oblige his imperial benefactress, the patriarch of Ferney was good enough to ‘arrange’ the incident. Others have done the same, Catherine the first of all. Here are the known facts. An officer of the name of Mirovitch, on guard at the fortress of Schlusselburg, induced a party of men under his command to render him assistance in setting free the ‘Czar.’ But Ivan had two guardians, to whom the strict command had been given to kill him rather than let him escape. They killed him. Catherine was suspected of complicity in the murder : she was thought to have planned the whole thing with Mirovitch. He, it is true, let himself be judged, condemned, and executed without a word ; but had he not been made to believe that he would be reprieved at the last moment } Precedents existed ; under Elizabeth, several high dignitaries, Osterman among others, had profited by the imperial clemency at the very moment when their head rested on the block. There were certain curious details in the trial : on the express command of the Empress, no attempt was made to find other accomplices, likely as they were to be found, in the crime. The relatives of Mirovitch were not interfered with. It would be unreasonable to try to prove an accusation on such vague grounds. Catherine showed once again, in these circumstances, the force of mind which she possessed. She was 290 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA travelling in Livonia when the news reached her. She did not hasten her return, or make any change in her itinerary. But the great crisis in home afifairs was that of 1 77 1- 1 775. At all times, up to the begin- ning of this century at least, Russia has been the home of pretenders. From the first half of the seventeenth century, after the extinction of the dynasty of Rourik, they followed one another at brief intervals. Under Catherine the series was almost interminable. In 1765 two deserters, Gavrilo Kremnief and levdokimof, successively assumed the name of Peter III. In 1769 there was a fresh apparition of the murdered Czar, and it was once more a deserter, Mamykine, who assumed the tragic and am- bitious mask. Emelian Pougatchef is thus only the continuation of a series. But this time Catherine has not to do with an obscure plot or a puerile attempt, which a few blows of the knout or the axe will soon set right. A whole tempest is let loose after the wild Samozvaniets, a storm which threatens to shake the throne and the foundations of the empire in a general downfall of the whole political and social structure. It is no more a mere duel between usurpers more or less well-armed for the defence or the con- quest of a crown, which has so long been at the disposal of whoever can seize upon it. The contest has another name and another bearing. It is a contest between the modern state, which Catherine is endeavouring to extricate from the unfinished materials left by Peter I. to his heirs, and the primitive state, in which the mass of the people persist in still living ; between organi- HOME POLICY 291 satiqn anijhfi inorganic disorder, which is the natural mode of existence of savage nations ; between centralisation and the centrifugal force which is peculiar to that state of nature. It is also the cry of that misery, in which the depths of the populace lie buried, rising against the improvised splendour of a class, how con- fined ! of privileged persons. It is the obscure protestation of the national conscience against the panegyrics of philosophers and poets, of Voltaire and Dierjavine, chanting the splendours of the new reign. For if Catherine, on the heights on which she is surrounded by her crowd of dignitaries and favourites, by all the pomp and majesty of her supreme rank, has done much already to give incomparable lustre to her name, her power, her own greatness, she has done as yet nothing, or almost nothing, for those under her, for the poor, the lowly, who toil and suffer as in the past, who have na share in these triumphs and conquests on high^ who know nothing of them, save to be ex- asperated by the reflection which does but light up the depths of their own misery. Among these, the short reign of Peter III. had awakened hopes and left behind it regrets. The seculari- sation of the estates of the clergy, begun by the Emperor, had seemed to lead the way towards the enfranchisement of the serfs, and did indeed point in that direction, for the serfs belonging to the secularised domains became free. We have seen that Catherine put an end to this. Peter had also inaugurated a system of absolute tolerance in regard to religious dissent. He had no wish to keep special watch over the 292 CATHERINE IT. OF RUSSIA welfare of the orthodox church. Legend, as usual, exaggerated his merits. Th.^ skoptsi, or mutilators, in particular, venerated in him a saint and martyr of their cause. His affiliation to their sect was, they imagined, the real reason of his death ; and the accidents of his married life lent some colour to these fables. Catherine, as we have seen, did not follow in this respect either the course of her husband, and what had made her victorious now turned against her. The raskol played a considerable part in the movement of insurrection, and with it all the elements of discontent and disorder, even to the turbulent restlessness of the Asiatic races, now in conflict, in the neighbourhood of Kasan and of Moscow, with the Russifying headship of the state : all that entered into conflict with j the state and the rdgime which it made and maintained.-^ Emelian Pougatchef was merely the instrument, the nominal leader of this general uprising of the rancours and appetites of an immense proletariat. Yet earlier, scattered^ instances of revolt among the serfs attached to the soil had often been seen. In 1768, in the government of Moscow alone, there were nine cases of proprietors killed by their peasants. The following year there were eight more, and : among the victims was one of the heroes of the Seven Years’ War, General Leontief, taken prisoner on the battlefield of Zorndorf, and _married to a sister of the victorious Roumiantsof. Emelian Pougatchef was the son of a Cossack of the Don. He too had taken part in the Seven Years’ War, where he had distinguished himself, had served also against the Turks, 1 HOME POLICY 293 and had then deserted. He was captured, escaped again, and entered upon the career of an outlaw and brigand, by which he came in time to the sanguinary drama which brought his life to an end. The fact of an accidental resemblance with Peter 1 1 1., which rendered his imposition more practicable, has been denied, and seems to rest on no serious authority. The portraits of the Samozvaniets which have reached us show no trace of likeness. Peter III. had the face of a grimacing ape; Pou- gatchef’s was of the common type of the Russian moujik. He took the name of the deceased Emperor as others had taken it before him. But he had the fatal luck to appear at the ^ hour marked for the social convulsion, whose causes we have indicated. He did not start the movement, which had long been gathering force ; it was rather the movement that bore him with it. He did not even try to direct its course. He put himself at its head and rushed forward blindly, urged on by the tumul- tuous and threatening flood. It was a terrible course, covering with smoking ruins a half of the empire. After four years, the disciplined force of the organised element got the better of the savage element. Pougatchef, conquered and made prisoner by one of the lieutenants of Panine, was brought to Moscow in a wooden cage, condemned to death, and executed. The headsman cut off his head before quartering him. Catherine declared that it was by her.^ order : she wished to appear more clement than Louis XV. had been with Damiens. She had nevertheless other injuries and other crimes to 294 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA. f avenge. The victims made by Pougatchef and his band were beyond all reckoning, and Cathe- rine had been greatly terrified, whatever sallies, more or less witty, she may have sent to Voltaire on the subject of the ‘ Marquis de Pougatchef.’ An odd characteristic of this incident, but odd in a way which is often seen in similar circum- stances, was that, while revolting against the state, as they saw it under Catherine’s organisa- tion, Pougatchef and his companions could only copy this organisation, ape it at least, even to the smallest details of its outer forms. After having married a daughter of the people, the false emperor gave her a species of court of honour. Young peasants, beaten into trim, played the freiline with immense grotesqueness, attempting ceremonious reverences and a respectful way of kissing the hand. To increase the illusion of his supposed sovereignty, Pougatchef even went the length of naming his principal lieutenants after the principal members of the court of Catherine : the Cossack Tchika took the name of Tcherni- chef, with the title of field-marshal ; others were called Count Vorontsof, Count Panine, Count Orlof, etc. This comedy cost dear to every one. It took from Catherine the last remains of her former enthusiasm for the redress of social iniquities; Russia, apart from immense material losses, had probably that of a reign which had seemed to be fruitful in great humanitarian reforms. The home policy of Catherine preserved to the last, as we have intimated, the trace of these terrible years, like the scar of blows received and rendered in a fight which was a fight to the death. There were HOME POLICY 295 ( thers among the dead than those who perished by fire or steel. Some of the ideas that Catherine had brought with her to the government of the empire remained behind on the field of battle ; and perhaps they were among the best that she had brought. / In regard to the department of police, Cathe-^ rine’s regime, from 1775 especially, was, in a sense, a rigime of reaction against that which Peter III. had inaugurated. Peter had suppressed the sinister secret chancellorship, the shameful heirloom of a time which Russia hoped never to see again. Catherine would not re-establish the institution with its hateful obsolete forms, but little by little, without using the name, she re- stored something very like the thing. She had Stephen Ivanovitch Chechkofski. A legend has been formed about this mysterious functionary, whom Catherine was never without. The reality, without equalling the horror of the memories left by the functionaries of Ivan Vassilevich, was doubtless of a kind to cast some shadow on the reputation that the friend of philosophers desired to preserve in Europe. In her hands it was a cunning and hypocritical machine of state. Chechkofski had neither official titles corre- sponding with his position nor apparent organisa- tion of his inquisitorial work. But his hand and eye were everywhere. He seemed to possess the gift of ubiquity. He never arrested anyone : he sent outran' invitation to dinner, which no one dared refuse. After dinner, there was conversa- tion, and the walls of the comfortable and discreet abode betrayed none of the secrets of these conversations. A particular chair was, it seems. 296 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA set aside for the guest, whom a word, amiable bui significant, had induced to cross the formidable threshold. Suddenly the chair, in which he had politely been motioned to be seated, tightened upon him, and descended with him to the floor below, in such a manner, however, that the head and shoulders of the personage remained above. The victim thus preserved his incognito from the assistants of Chechkofski, who subjected the lower part of the body to more or less rigorous treatment. Chechkofski himself turned away at this moment, and appeared to ignore what was passing. The performance finished, and the chair restored to its place, the host turned about, and smilingly took up the conversation at the point where it had been interrupted by this little surprise. It is said that a young man, fore- warned of what awaited him, used his presence of mind, and his great muscular strength, to thrust Chechkofski himself into the place reserved for him on the fatal seat. After this he took to flight. The rest can be imagined. Chechkofski died in 1 794, leaving a large fortune. II The great ensemble of laws which Catherine proposed, in 1767, to graft upon Russia, on the model of Montesquieu and Beccaria, was destined never to be achieved, despite certain legislative experiments, done always by fits and starts. The main reason for this, apart from many secondary reasons, is that the work could only be done by beginning at the beginning, and the HOME POLICY 297 beginning was the reform, if not the suppression,^ of serfdom. This question, be it said to the honour of Catherine, is one of those that occupied her mind the most. When she was yet Grand Duchess, she had, as we have seen, certain projects, quite impracticable indeed, for the enfranchisement of the peasants belonging to the soil. She had found in books, one knows not where, the history of a general and simultaneous emancipation of serfs in Germany, France, Spain, and other coun- tries, — the work of a council ! She asked herself if a meeting of archimandrites could not produce the same excellent result in Russia. On reaching the throne she inaugurated the great work by 'TefoTming the condition of the serfs in the matter of the ecclesiastical estates confiscated by the Treasury ; the peasants, included there, were subjected simply to a light poll-tax ; all that they 'plheTm' addlrion was' thei^^ own property, and they could free themselves altogether for a moderate amount. It was the offer of liberty as a premium on the labour and industry of those concerned ; and it was a fruitful idea. Its carry- ing out was not without inconveniences : the despoiled monks found themselves all at once reduced to beggary. According to the Marquis de Bausset, they had only about eight roubles a year per head to live on ; they were forced to beg \._^pn the roads; and the degradation. of the Russian "blergy, one of the most melancholy features of modern Russia, may well be derived, in part at least, from this. But there were about a million peasants enfranchised, or about to be. It was a beginning. For further progress, Catherine 20 298 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA counted on her legislative commission. She had to alter her course, as we have seen. Her In~ struction had in this respect to be retouched as we have indicated. The great mass of peasants belonging with the soil had not even a repre- sentative in the assembly, which merely discussed to whom they should belong. Every one sought after this right : the shopkeepers laid claim to it, and also the clergy, and even the Cossacks, jealous of reclaiming their privileges. This re- luctance to admit her humanitarian ideas vexed Catherine. Some notes written at this period give us a curious glimpse of her impressions : ‘ If it is not possible to admit the personality of a serf, he is not a man. Call him an animal, and we shall win the respect of the whole world. . . . The law of serfdom rests on an honest principle established for animals by animals.’ But the deputies of the commission did not read these notes, and probably they would have made no difference to their feelings. On all sides Catherine found an invincible opposition. By 1766 she had already proposed to the Society of Political Economy, founded under her auspices, a question concerning the right of the labourer to the land which he has watered with his sweat. A hundred and twenty replies were sent, in Russian, French, German, and Latin.” It was Bearde de I’Abbaye, member of the Academy of Dijon, who won the prize of a thousand ducats. But, by thirteen voices against three, the society opposed the publication of his work. Catherine finally persuaded herself that the problem was for the present insoluble and dangerous to approach. The revolt of Pougat- HOME POLICY 299 chef confirmed her in this idea. In the course of a conversation which she had- at this time with the head of the excise office, V. Dahl, she ex- pressed the fear that in raising the question there might result a revolution like that in America. She had evidently very vague notions as to what was happening at this moment across the ocean. I ‘ Who knows, however ? ’ she added ; ‘ I have succeeded in so many other things!’ In 1775, writing to her Attorney-General, Prince Via- zemski, she insisted again on the necessity of doing something for the unhappy serfs, without which ‘ they will sooner or later take the liberty that we refuse them.’ Count Bloudof professes to have seen in the Empress’s hands, in 1784, a projected ukase ruling that the serfs born after 1785 should be free. This ukase never saw the light. In the papers of the Empress, found after her death, there is another project concerning the organisation of freedmen, notably the nine hun- dred thousand serfs who had been emancipated by the secularisation of the ecclesiastical estates. This document has been published in the 20th volume of the Recueil de la Soci^td d Histoire (of Russia). The numerous corrections on the original, written throughout in Catherine’s hand- writing, prove that she worked over it a long time. She only arrived, however, at the some- what odd, and probably impracticable, idea of an application of municipal institutions to the very different conditions of rural life. This con- ception remained equally barren. There were many reasons why it should be so. In fact, the elevation of Catherine in 1762 300 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA had been the work of the nobility, or/ at least of the upper classes, affd'TTot "that of the people. It was therefore essential that the niw Czarina should stand by this element, and be, in the first place, sure of it. Besides, even before her accession to the throne, the ‘ philosophical mind ’ of Catherine, and her liberalism, did not prevent her from a certain preference for the old families, as we see plainly in her memoirs. In course of time she substituted little by little for the old aristocracy of the Narychkines, the Saltykofs, the Galitzines, an aristocracy of recent creation, the Orlofs, the Patiomkines. But this was merely an exchange. On the other side, it is easy to see how a liberal of the stamp of Diderot could easily, after having examined the question of Prussian serfdom with the Princess Dachkof, come to the conclusion that a radical reform on this point would be premature. The observations of the Princess sufficed to shake, in the mind of the philosopher, convictions formed and nourished during twenty years. Probably something of this appeared in the conversations that Diderot afterwards had with Catherine herself. And ten years later, the Comte de Segur, having doubtless seen the peasants through the windows of the imperial coach, calmly expressed the conviction that their lot left nothing to desire. Catherine was bound to end, as indeed she did, by becoming per- suaded of it herself. In her notes on the book of Radistchef, an avowed and inflexible liberal, who, in 1790, thought it was still possible to act on the principles of philosophy, and paid dear for his error, the Empress goes the jength of HOME POLICV 301 declaring’, as an incontestable 'act, that there is no peasant in the -world better treated than the Russian peasant, and no master more kind and humane than a proprietor of serfs in Russia! To know the real truth in the matter, it is need- less to go very deeply into the examination of the facts, facts which resemble those of a martyro- logy. As an example of the humanity shown by the Russian lords to the serfs belonging to them, the Comte de Segur has pointed in his memoirs to a certain Countess Saltykof. It is an unfortunate instance. The early years of the reign of Catherine were filled with the re- port of the trial and condemnation of a Countess Daria Saltykof, accused of having put to death, by means of refined tortures, a hundred and thirty-eight of her serfs of both sexes. Seventy- five victims, one of them a girl of fifteen, were proved with certainty by the inquiry. And yet, despite the outcry of popular indignation, which has made the name of the Saltytchiha a fearful memory, Catherine dared not do complete justice. The more or less voluntary accomplices of the horrible woman, the pope who presided at thfe burial of the victims, and the valet who flogged them, received the knout in one of the squares of Moscow ; the Countess Saltykof escaped with penal servitude for life. Even this, however, denoted a progress ; under the reign of Elizabeth, under that of Peter III., these very facts, uni- versally known, remained unpunished. The knout was brought into play merely upon those who had denounced these abominable crimes ! The case of the Saltytchiha was exceptional ; the rule, however, was cruel enough. The law 302 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA appointed no limit to the right of proprietors, in regard to the corporal chastisement of their serfs. It authorised them to send them to Siberia. It was a means of peopling the vast solitudes of the land of exile. Catherine added the power of completing the exile by hard labour. For the rest, the law was dumb, as in the past. And the jurisprudence varied. In 1762 the senate sentenced to transportation a proprietor who had flogged a peasant to death. But in 1761 an identical act was punished merely by religious penance. A curious document has come down to us, a list of punishments inflicted, in the year 1751 and onward, on the estates of Count P. Roumiantsof. It is distressing to read ; a very nightmare. For entering his masters’ room while they were asleep, and thus disturbing their sleep, a servant is flogged and condemned to the loss of his name : he is to be called only by an insulting nickname, any one infringing this order to suffer five thousand blows of the stick, without mercy. Five thousand blows of the stick are, however, far from constituting a ma.xi- mum. A sort* of criminal code, in use on the same estates, includes much severer chastise- ments. It is further provided that the applica- tion of these penalties is not to cause too much inconvenience to the proprietor, by depriving him too long of the labour of the beaten servants. It is ruled that a man who has received seven- teen thousand (.y/V) blows of the stick, or a hundred blows of the knout — the two are con- sidered equivalent — is not to remain in bed more than a week. If he is longer in rising and re- turning to work, he will be deprived of food. HOME POLICY 303 This code was in force during the reign of Catherine. It corresponds pretty well with the general practice. In fact, after all her contra- dictory tentatives, Catherine took the initiative in this direction only in two cases, both of them a distinct aggravation of the existing riginie. I n re- gard to the treatment of the serfs by their masters, by suppressing the right of direct appeal to the sovereign, she suppressed the sole corrective, indeed a very insufficient one, which might, in a certain measure, have attenuated these monstrous abuses. Those who had complaints were sent to their proprietors, that is to say, to the butchers themselves ; and there the lash was applied. In 1765 a ukase of the senate substituted for the penalty of the lash that of the knout and hard labour. In 1779 a French painter of the name of Velly, employed to paint the portrait of the Empress, was near making the acquaintance of this new legislation, having taken advantage of a sitting to present a petition to her Majesty. A diplomatic intervention was required to rescue him from the consequences of his false step. In regard to the law of serfdom itself, the great work of Catherine’s reign was the introduction of the Russian common law in the ancient Polish pro- vinces of Lesser Russia, that is to say, the trans- formation of the free peasants into serfs belonging with the soil. In 1774, in talking with Diderot, who spoke with some disgust of the dirtiness that he had noticed in the peasants round St. Petersburg, the Empress demanded : ‘ Why should they look after a body which is not their own ? ’ This bitter word, if it was really said, sums up a state 304 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA of things with which she had finally come to reconcile her humanitarian aspiration. In 1789, in a series of advertisements in the Gazette de St.-Pdtersbourg (No. 36), side by side with the offer of a Holstein stallion for sale, we find that of some copies of the Instruction pour la Com- mission Legislative, and lower down these lines — ‘ Any one wishing to buy an entire family, or a young man and a girl separately, may inquire at the silk-washer’s, opposite the church of Kasan. The young man, named Ivan, is twenty-one years of age ; he is healthy, robust, and can curl a lady’s hair. The girl, well-made and healthy, named Marfa, aged fifteen, can do sewing and embroidery. They can be examined, and are to be had at a reasonable price.’ This sums up what Catherine left to her suc- cessor by way of result, in regard to her work as legislator. ‘As she is ambitious of all sorts of fame,’ wrote the Comte de Segur in 1 786, ‘ she wishes to lay claim, during the peace, to that of legislator; but her subjects have put more obstacles in her way than her enemies, . . . and she has been forced to acknowledge that it is unfortunately easier to make great conquests than good laws.’ At the same time, sending a memorandum on the general state of the legislation in Russia, the work of his brother, M. d’Aguesseau, he added the following reflections : — ‘ The result of his work will be one more proof of this truth, that in a land of slaves there can be neither good laws nor good morals, that every- thing becomes corrupt before being civilised, that there is an inevitable lack of light and help, HOME POLICY 305 and that all things betray the irrationality of despotism, even the very measures that are in- tended to restrain and modify it.’ At the top of his memorandum D’Aguesseau had put this line of Du Bellay ; ‘ Plus je vois I’etranger, plus j’aime ma patrie.’ Ill In regard to the administration of justice, Catherine’s reign is distinguished by several important reforms, whose merit, however, has been very variously appreciated. Mercier de la Riviere expressed great enthusiasm in regard to an organisatiQn.,jal.4 )rovincial tribunals, put ^ in force after the peace with Turkey in 1774. In the memoirs of a contemporary (Vinski), perhaps a better judge, these tribunals are referred to with not nearly so much praise. The reform has merely put 32,0 judges where there had formerly been 50, that is to say, in a government divided, according to the new regulations, into four districts with 80 judges each. ‘ The most obvious result of this benefit to the poor farmer is that instead of three sheep he must now bring fifteen a year to the town,’ in order to keep in well with justice. All that, adds Vinski, may be good to dazzle strangers, and make them admire the Semiramis of the North; for us Russians ‘it is a mere puppet-play.’ Catherine also did her best to quicken the march of justice, always desperately slow. In 1 769 a tradesman of Moscow, Popof, having been driven by the exasperating intricacies of procedure into crying aloud in open court that there was no 3o6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA justice in Russia under the reign of Catherine II., the Empress had these audacious words erased from the minutes of proceedings, but she com- manded, at the same time, that the affairs of Popof should be settled with the greatest despatch, ‘ so that he might see that there was justice in Russia.’ The sovereign’s zeal was praiseworthy ; it pro- duced, as a rule, but little effect. The machine was too cumbersome for any one hand, even as energetic as hers, to regulate the heavy wheels. In 1785 some French shipowners were still awaiting at St. Petersburg the settlement of certain indemnities due to them for the losses they had endured in the ilrst Turkish war. The Comte de Segur, who had exerted himself on their behalf, wrote that he could obtain no more than a postponement from day to day instead of from week to week. He added — ‘ As for the actual debts, I will certainly do what I can, but I guarantee in advance that it will be useless. The English minister and I are convinced by sad experience that it is impossible here to get the money for letters of credit when the debtor refuses to pay. The laws are explicit, but the corruption of the judges, the indolence of the tribunals, custom and precedent, are always in his favour. The Empress has at this moment to decide the case of the Sieur Prory of Lyon, and the debtor says openly that if it is possible to make him lose his case, it will be at least quite impossible to make him pay. This inconceivable negligence in the execution of the ukases relative to debts is caused by the general disorder of the principal people here, who are all in a state of HOME POLICY 307 ruin, and who protect the knavery of the Russian merchants who prop them up.’ The initiative of the Empress, and her supreme right of justice, are frequently put in force, and in the most effectual manner, as we have already intimated, in the mitigation of the excessive severities to which the ordinary jurisdictions still cling. Catherine boasted that she had never signed a death-warrant. She nevertheless allowed both Pougatchef and Mirovitch to be brought to the scaffold. But she employed a subterfuge for these exceptional cases : declaring herself directly implicated in the case of those outrages which were to be punished, she would occasionally renounce her prerogative as high justiciary, in order, as she said, that she might not be at once judge and party. In general, she substituted transportation for capital punishment, and even for the lash. She nevertheless allowed the knout to be sometimes used, even as a means of coercion, in order to obtain the confession of the accused. It must be understood what this kind of torture was. The knout was a whip with a leather thong prepared in such a manner that it possessed at once the elasticity of gutta-percha and the hardness of steel. Wielded by an execu- tioner, who took a spring to strike with greater force, the thong cut into the flesh to the very bone, and left at every blow a deep furrow. A hundred blows were considered the limit, beyond which the resistance, that is to say the life, of the patient, even if exceptionally vigorous, could not go. In general, the ‘subjects ’ lost consciousness at the tenth or fifteenth blow. To continue, was soon to flog a dead body. The skill of the 3o8 CATHERINE H. OF RUSSIA torturer consisted in taking aim, so as to Jengthen out the bloody slashes on the patient’s back, one by the side of another, without taking away an inch of flesh. At the moment of striking, the zaplietchnik (so called because he put the whip- hand behind his shoulder to give more force to the blow) cried to the patient : Bieriegis ! ( Look out ! or, literally, get aside) as a last touch of irony. In the torture-chambers the knout was commonly combined with the strappado ; the patient was flogged after having been suspended in the air by the arms, which had been pinioned behind the back, so as to put the shoulders out of joint, and cause an intolerable pain. We know that Catherine was resolutely op- posed to the u,§.e..of torture. Nevertheless, in the coursE'Sf atrial which lasted from 1765 to 1774, in connection with some fires, the torture was applied three times to the accused. A legend, of which we cannot verify the source, shows the sovereign, in the part of high justiciary, brought into contact with what is called to-day ‘ un crime passionnel.’ The case is very compli- cated. \A young peasant, the child of rich parents, is in love with a poor young man. Surprised by the father, she hides her lover under the mattress of the common bed ; promiscuity in sleeping ac- commodation being then general in Russia, even among well-to-do people of this class. The father stretches himself on the bed, and the unlucky man is stifled. A neighbour comes in. On hearing what has happened, he takes the corpse and throws it into the sea. But in return he forces the girl to become his mistress. She has a child, whom he also drowns. Then he becomes HOME POLICY 309 in want of money, and demands it from the girl, who, in order to satisfy him, steals from her father. Finally, he makes her go with him to the tavern, so that he may parade his conquest. She goes, but, on coming out of the tavern, she sets it on fire. It burns, with all who are in it. She is arrested, and convicted of theft, infanticide, and incendiarism. The tribunals condemn her. Catherine sets her free, restricting her punish- ment to a religious penance. IV It is in the domain of administration, properly so called, that Catherine, from one end to the other of her reign, showed the most sustained,;^ and, to a certain point, the most fruitful activity. She concerned herself with everything. We have a very voluminous personal work of hers on the establishment- of manufaetures. On the other hand, she takes it into her head, in 1 783, to reform the tpilo .tte of the lords and ladies of her court, in order to render it less costly : this reform is not at all pleasing to the manufacturers. Elizabeth, we are told by Count Galovkine, in his memoirs, forced the beautiful Narychkine to wear her dresses without a hoop. In order that the charms of her figure did not too much outdo her own beauty. For less personal reasons Catherine had recourse to sumptuary laws, and the Grand Duchess Paul, on returning from Paris, is obliged to send back, without even un- packing them, the marvels that the famous Mademoiselle Bertin had put in her boxes. In general,- it must be said, notwithstanding 310 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA energy and good intentions, the initiative of the sovereign is shown in this direction, as in others, without either consistency or any particular knowledge of things, fragmentary, capricious, and at the beck of chance. ‘There are too many undertakings in this ^ empire,’ writes the Comte de Segur, in 1787; ‘ the disorder that follows on the heels of pre- cipitation spoils the greater part of the best ideas. At the same time, there is an attempt to form a tiers itat, attract foreign commerce, establish manufactures of all kinds, extend agriculture, increase the paper currency, raise the rate of exchange, build in towns, pebple^deserts, cover the Black Sea with a new fleet, conquer a neigh- bouring country, bind down another, and extend the influence of Russia over all Europe. Certainly this is undertaking a great deal.’ Catherine, too, had to fight with enormous difficulties. During the first year of her reign she discovered that in the Senate, where the most complex questions regarding the administra- tion of the country were being debated, there was no map indicating the position of the governmental centres, whose affairs were settled without the least notion whether they were on the Black Sea or the White Sea. She sent a messenger to the Academy of Sciences with five roubles to bring one. She worked energetically at the repression of the many and extravagant abuses which had crept into the procedure of all the branches of local government, and Russia is indebted to her / for much serious«~p£Qgxess in this respect ; yet there too the task proved -tn be h& frmA her strength. One day she sent an officer of her HOME POLICY 311 guard, Moltchanof, to Moscow, to give a reversion of judgment, and clear up certain official corrup- tions which had been brought to her^ notice. Moltchanof required a passport for the journey. Russia has always been the land of passports. He lost three days in going about from office to office in order to obtain one. Meanwhile the delinquents, duly forewarned, had had time to put everything in order. A vast and shameless corruption spreads from top to bottom of the ladder of government. In 1770, during the plague of Moscow, the police officers arranged with the health officers to levy contributions on the rich bourgeois of the city. They were denounced as suspects ; the doctor, under pretence of ex- amining them, smeared nitrate of silver over their hands ; black spots soon appeared, the supposed plague-stricken people were put in quarantine : if they did not buy themselves out, their houses were pillaged. At St. Petersburg even, a trust- worthy witness, the inspector of police, Longpre, sent over from Paris in 1783, on a judicial mission, points out the most shocking disorders : streets unguarded, fires destroying, at every instant, whole quarters of the town, etc. About the same time, the English envoy, Harris, mentions the case of one of his compatriots who, having been robbed of a large sum of money, tries in vain to obtain redress from the under- officers of police, and ends by going to the lieutenant of police in person, whom he finds at ten o’clock in the morning employed in working out combinations with a packet of dirty cards. '|\ One of the most durable, beneficial, and ’ best managed works of Catherine was the 312 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Foundlinp - Asvhim. erected in 1 763. Privileges and favours, such as no benevolent institution ever received before, were granted to this estab- lishment : exemption from taxes and statute- labour, powers of legal self-government, personal liberty of inmates, and of those employed in their care, monopoly of the lottery, share in benefits at the theatre, etc. A revenue of 50,000 roubles was assigned by the Empress for the mainten- ance of the Asylum, while a philanthropist. Procope Demidof, erected the huge buildings at his cost. Betzky, appointed director, put into it his whole fortune (about two millions of francs) and twenty years of assiduous toil. A work published by him in 1775, under the title, Plans et Statuts des diffdrents Etablissements ordonn^s par r Impdratrice Catherine pour 1 ' Education de la Jeunesse, gives a good idea of the greatness of the scheme. Diderot, who superintended its translation and publication at the Hague, added a note in which we find these lines : — ‘ When time and the steadfastness of this great sovereign shall have brought (these establish- ments) to the point of perfection of which they are all susceptible, and which some have reached, people will go to Russia for the purpose of seeing them, as people formerly went to Egypt, Lace- demon, and Crete, but with a curiosity which will, I venture to think, be better founded and better rewarded.’ By this time people are, indeed, beginning to visit Russia. It is true that it is not precisely with the object that Diderot prophesied. But perhaps we must still wait for the accomplishment of his prophecy. HOME POLICY 313 , V One side' of Catherine’s administration presents itself beforte us under the aspect of a problem defying all solution : this is her fi nancial polic y. What the fi nances of Russia were at her acces- sion she has ; said in a private journal, of which, unfortunatel}^ a fragment only has been pre- served : — ‘ I found the army stationed in Prussia without pay for the past eight months; in the Treasury 17 millions of roubles of unpaid bonds; a mone- tary circulation of 100 millions of roubles, of which 40 millions were taken in kind abroad ; almost all the branches of commerce monopo- lised by private individuals ; the excise revenue farmed out for two millions ; a loan of two millions attempted in Holland by the Empress Elizabeth, but without success ; no credit and no confidence abroad ; at home, the peasants in revolt everywhere, and, in certain districts, the proprietors themselves ready to imitate their example,’ This was the result of the rdgime that Peter I. had found in force, and had not attempted to modify, which came frcm a conglomeration of ideas and traditions, the direct heritage of the Tartar domination, and of the Eastern habit which was summed up, not so much in the squandering, as in the pillage of all the econo- mical resources of the country, and which we have thus characterised, a few years since, in a study of the financial aspect of the great empire — ‘ Everything that could be taxed was taxed, even to the long beards of the moujiki, who 3»4 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSJ ^ found themselves obliged to pay toll at the gates of the towns! To bring in the taxe-s those in power resorted to fire and steel, to military warrants, and to ingenuities of torture recom- mended by the experience of cenfjries. The treasury still remaining empty, tlje revenues were farmed out, sold, and put up, for lottery. Finally, in despair, the whole was ;taken for the part, the object taxed for the tax, 'and in 1729 there was established an “ office of confiscated goods.’” What does Catherine do wit’h this state of things ? She begins by tryin^i to palliate it. She puts the resources of her pr ivate purse at the disposition of the state. Th^n endeavours to amend the organisation of the public treasury. The capital vice of this organisation is the lack oUinity : the finances of tl je empire are in the hands of different institutjons, independent one » of another, each acting i ^ a different direction, each seeing which can ir,ake the most out of the other. Catherine atte^^upts a unification and a centjalrSatton of these services. IsoFated reforms, the suppression of g'lonopolies and indivisible privileges in a certain number of commercial societies, the caneeffmg of the farming out of the excises, furnish a supp^eruent of receipts. But the sum-total of the rev^eaue remains very low ; it is not more than 17 m iiPons of roubles (about 85 millions of francs). Fjow the question is how to make it even with the, new demands of the imperial policy, which woui’d be on a level with that of the great Europeian powers, that of France, which has a budgt^t of five hundred millions of francs, of England’, which has one of HOME POLICY 315 twelve million pounds. More than this, Cathe- rine desires to eclipse her rivals in— the West. By her ifTnumerable enTerprises at home, by the pageantry of her court, by her largesses to a whole crowd of adulators, with which Europe is soon filled, by the gold which she showers on her favourites, she desires to efface the memory of the great king, the Roi Soleil, whose dazzling memory haunts her imagination. And she well-nigh succeeds ! The first Turkish war costs 47^^ millions of roubles. And, after a few years’ respite, she follows up again her great enterprises abroad with the annexation of the Crimea, the second Turkish war, the war with Sweden, the conquest of Poland, the expedition to Tersia, etc. At home the outlay is not less. Favouritism costs in thirty-four years about 50 millions of roubles. The maintenance of the court, with its disorder and extravagance, re- quires enormous sums. From 1762 to 1768 the keeping up of the palace of Peterhof alone is debited to the state in 180,000 roubles (900,000 francs), and when the Empress arrives there in June 1768 she finds everything in absolute dila- pidation. The money has all gone elsewhere. In 1796 it is with a budget of about 80 millions of roubles that Catherine has to meet her liabilities. And meet them she does. From one end of her reign to the other she supplies for all. She pays for everybody and for everything : the apprenticeship of Alexis Orlof on the fleet in the Archipelago, the follies of Patiomkine, and the enthusiasm of Voltaire. She lets the gold slip through her fingers, and she is never in want, or never seems to be in want. How ? by what 3 i 6 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA •' 3 miracle ? The explanation is easy to give ; but, ; to understand that explanation, it is needful to ; penetrate a secret, of which Catherine had (and this was her merit and her great source of strength), if not the profound knowledge, at all events the intuition of genius. In all their struggles with the finances of the empire, it is strange that the governments of the empire never thought, at one time or another, of an expedient which, disastrous as its practice had been in the West, still tempted the fancy. On arriving at power Peter III. did, in fact, decree the founda- tion of a bank, and the issue of bank-notes for the sum of 5 millions of roubles. The idea of the Emperor did not at first attract the Empress. The paper currency, whose workings she did not ' exactly understand, did not seem of much use. j But, in 1769, the exigencies of the Turkish war | overcame her repugnances and scruples, and, \ from that time, the instrument of her financial | power, the magic power which, from I769_tg I 1796, sustained the fortune and the fame of the great sovereign, fed the colossal and ever-renewed j effort of her reign, and made up for all her prodigalities, was born. In twenty-seven years Catherine issued 137,700,000 roubles^-worth of J p aper mon ey. Adding 47,739,130 roubles on ^ the^one part, and 82,457,426 roubles o n the ; other, for the proceeds of home or foreign loans * contracted at the same period, we arrive at a \ total of 264,665,556 roubles, or more than a milliard of francs, raised on the public credit. That is how Catherine paid. HOME POLICY VI There is not much to be said respecting the army in the reign of Catherine. Her reign wab ^ warlike ; it countenanced neither militarism nor the military spirit. The military spirit lives on discipline, respect for the powers that be, and also ambition. In making Alexis Orlof an admiral and Patiomkine a general in chief, Catherine by no means cultivated these sentiments. In 1772, at the congress of Fokchany, Gregory Orlof, who had never seen a battlefield, assumed the tone of a superior in speaking to Roumiantsof, the con- queror of Kagoul, and was near taking the com- mand in partnership with him. But Roumiantsof only changed rivals. A few years later, he had to retire before a new favourite. When it was no longer commanded by Roumiantsof, and not yet by Souvarof, the army was in general very ill commanded. But the soldier was then as he has since been, as he recently was under the walls of Plewna, and he had before him only the Turks, who were put hors de combat, so to speak, before the combat began, by the European tactics ; or else the Poles, who, like the Turks, were, in point of view of the art of war, two centuries behind the time. Catherine was careful to avoid fighting with the diS:iplined troops of the West. When she went against the Swedes, who were never- theless a poor adversary for Russia, she had cause to repent of it. Besides, she conquered cheaply, as Prince Henry of Prussia said. Doubt- less, however, her indomjtable energy ^niL-her audacity contributed to brin^victory to her side. 3i8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA Competent judges have accused her of having, in all that concerns the military administration, spoilt the work of Peter the Great. In 1763 she sanctioned a reform which put the regiments entirely into the hands of their colonels. Peter had confided the cares of administration to in- spectors, employed by a general commissariat, though a commissariat very much centralised. The abandonment of this organisation gave rise to numerous abuses. According to the Comte de Segur, the Russian army amounted, in 1 785, to a fighting force of about five^^undred and thirty thousand men, of whom two hundred and thirty thousand were the regular troops. Segur observed, nevertheless, that the disorder which reigned in the War Office made it impossible to get at the exact figures, and that the official numeration was a little dubious.^ He added : ‘ Many colonels have confessed td me that they made from 3000 to 4000 roubles annually out of their infantry regiments, and that those of cavalry brought in 18,000 to their chiefs.’ The Comte V de Vergennes wrote at the same time: ‘The Russian fleets were far from gaining fame by leaving the Baltic. The one which was last seen in the Mediterranean has not left a good reputation. Leghorn complains particularly of the /officers, who have bought much and paid foi:|Nttle.’ / / To sum up, Catherine attempted and began /many things ; she achieved hardly any. It was fin her nature to go forward without looking at I what she'teffc-feehiad her. She left many ruins. ‘ Before the death of Catherine,’ some one has y said, ‘ the greater part of the monuments of her reign were already in debris' HOME POLICY 3*9 There was a demon in her which drove her forward, ever forward, beyond the present hour and the result already attained, without leaving her even the satisfaction of a moment’s pause to contemplate the finished work. This demon was perhaps only that of ambition, and of an ambition sometimes poor and trivial. When she had settled the plans and laid the foundations of an edifice, she had a medal struck, and, the medal once struck and put away in her cabinet, she thought no more of what was to be built. Thq famous marble church, begun in 1780, was still only begun twenty years after. But perhaps this was the part allotted by Pro- vidence to the Czarina, and was it not hers also to carry with her on this headlong course a people whom Peter I. had not succeeded in shaking entirely out of its sleep of ages — a sleeping giant under a shroud of snow — and who needed only to be drawn out of this torpor in order to follow the natural course, a torrent that nothing can inter- cept, towards a mysterious destiny ? And perhaps also Catherine was not entirely at fault when she wrote to Grimm, the day after the day on which was unveiled the monument which she had erected to the great Czar, her predecessor — ‘ Peter I., seen in the open air, seemed to me to libk quite brisk as well as imposing; one would have said he was pleased with the work. For some time I could not look at him fixedly ; I felt moved, and when I looked around me I saw that all had tears in their eyes. The face was turned away from the Black Sea, but the pose of his head seemed to say that he could see well enough either way. He was too far away to 320 CATHERINE //. OF RUSSIA speak to me, but he seemed to me to have an air of satisfaction, which communicated itself to me, and encouraged me to/ try to do yet better in the future, if I can.’ CHAPTER III FOREIGN POLICY I The famous German historian Sybel wrote in 1869: ‘No burning question arises in Germany an our days without our finding some trace of the y^ Jpolicy of Catherine IL’ This observation might e well be generalised and applied to the greater part of Europe. Very ambitious, very feminine, sometimes almost childish, the foreign policy of Catherine was one of univepsal' expansion. The opening of her reign seemed nevertheless to intimate something quite different. On coming to the throne, the Empress an- nounced herself as a peaceful sovereign, disposed to remain quietly at home if she were not inter- fered with, desirous, in consequence, of avoiding all conflict with her neighbours, and determined to employ all her activity in the home govern- ment of an empire which offered a sufficient field for her spirit of enterprise. This programme corresponded, even from the point of view of international relations, with an ambition which abdicated none of its rights, but which was governed by the most generous inspirations. Writing to Count Kayserling, her ambassador at FOREIGN POLICY 321 Warsaw, Catherine wrote : ‘ I tell you, in a word, that my aim is to be joined in the bonds of friend- ship with all the powers, in armed alliance, so that I may always be able to range myself on the side of the oppressed, and in this way become the arbiter of Europe.’ She was not as yet, it is evident, thinking of the spoliation of Poland. She rejected the very idea of conquest. Courland itself did not tempt her. ‘ I have people enough to render happy,’ she said, ‘ and this little corner of the earth will add nothing to my comfort’ She thought to confirm the treaty of perpetual peace with Turkey. She reduced the fighting force of her army. She was in no haste to fill the vacancies made in her arsenals by the ruinous wars of the preceding reigns. She repeated that it was needful, before all things, to set the country in order and repair the finances. How did she come to abandon so soon and so entirely this initial point of view? We can cite in this respect a most valuable piece of evidence. The man to whom we owe it is one of those who are the honour of their country, and the frankness of his language is calculated to throw light on this obscure side of Catherine’s history ; it seems also to indicate that certain sentiments, to-day ignored or discredited in Russia, were not always foreign to noble minds. Some years after the death of Catherine, in a letter addressed to Alexander I., who had just assumed the throne. Count Simon Vorontsof wrote as follows : — ‘The late Empress desired peace and desired it to last. . . . Everything was calculated to con- firm it, ... It is Prussia , , , that induced Count \j 322 CATHERINE II. Of RUSSIA Panine to revoke the ameliorations which had been introduced into the constitution of Poland in order to gain possession of the country with more facility. It is Prussia who persuaded this same minister to inStst-that"all' the Polish dissi- dents should be admitted to all the posts of state, which was impossible without employing violence against the Poles. It was employed, and it was this which formed the confederations, the number of which was carefully concealed from the Empress. Bishops and senators were arrested in full diet and exiled to Russia. Our troops entered Poland, ravaged everything, pursued the confederates into the Turkish provinces, and this violation of territory caused the Turks to declare war against us. ... It is from the time of this war that we must date the foreign debts, and the creation of paper money at home, two calamities which are the misery of Russia.’ Thus it was Prussia which, in order to gain the assistance of T^^ia in its Polish policy, drew Catherine into a'Tareer of violent and violating enterprises of all kinds m which she found herself caught as in a wheel. This course, nevertheless, was, we incline to believe, inevitable for her in one way or another. Quite apart from Prussia, Catherine had from the first too lofty a notion of her power not to be tempted, one day or another, to make use of it, and too lofty a conception of the part she had to play, not to brush aside any sort of scruples. In October 1762, the court of Denmark having proposed to her to renounce the guardianship of her son, in respect of the Duchy of Holstein, she replied in these characteristic terms — FOREIGN POLICY 323 * The case is perhaps unique that a sovereign empress should be guardian in a fief of empire for her son, but it is stranger still that a woman, who has five hundred thousand men ready to do battle for her ward, should be told that she ought not to be concerned with a Schvverdt [sic) which can hardly maintain three hundred men.’ It is nevertheless probable, if not certain, that in entering upon the course'which was to lead her so far from her first projects of collected and peaceful labour, Catherine did not realise whither she was going, nor that the current was bearing her along, that her first success es had intoxicated her, and that she was thus hurried forward, in her own despite, into a state of war-fever, which rose at times almost to madness, and in which she lost all count of the means at her disposal, and of every consideration of prudence, or, alas ! of equity. The Marquis de Virac wrote to the Comte de Vergennes in 1782 : ‘ Here they snatch at everything, greedily and unthinkingly, which seems likely to add a new glory to the reign of Catherine II. They do not trouble to count the cost ; the first thing is to be moving.’ To be moving, no matter how, no matter where, to make a great racket, no matter at what cost, such, in effect, seemed to be the constant concern of Catherine from the time of the first Turkish war onward. Helped by her ‘luck,’ she reposed on the belief that something for her greater fame and the greater grandeur of her empire would come out of everything. ‘ The good fortune which crowns all the enterprises of the Russians,’ writes the Comte de Vergennes in 1 784, ‘ wraps them, so to speak in a radiant 324 CATHERINE TI. OF RUSSIA atmosphere, through which they see nothing. ' As for political system or general idea at the ] back of her enterprises, do not ask the Empress ! for anything of the sort. She will answer : ‘Cirumstances, conjunctures, and conjectures.’ As for conciliating these enterprises with a higher law of morals, of humanity, or of international right, she has no thought of such a thing. ‘It is as useless to speak to her of Puffendorf or of Grotius,’ writes the English envoy Macartney from St. Petersburg in 1770, ‘as if one spoke of Clarke or Tillotson at Constantinople.’ ■ Catherine, moreover, inaugurates, in the conduct | of foreign affairs, a rule of pgj:^ nn pl ;n; * i* 4» wFr, j which itself cannot but give totHern an adven- | turous turn, for she flings herself into it with her i nervous and excitable woman’s temperament. j She expends, especially at the outset, an extra- j ordinary activity. She dictates herself all the | diplomatic correspondence. She soon finds out, | it is true, that she cannot manage it all, and that | the service suffers by it. She then reserves to | herself the most important matters, leaving to the : minister, th at is to sav :.»*tcr Count Panine, the bulk of the work. She writes on April i, 1763, I to Count Kayserling : ‘In future I hope secrecy .g; will be better kept, for I do not choose to take any one into my confidence in regard to what is in the air.’ Her predecessors had only^short extracts communicated to them from the de- spatches of her foreign ambassadors. She insists on seeing the originals ; she reads and annotates them. These annotations are curious. On the margin of a despatch from Prince Galitzine, her ambassador at Vienna, informing her that the FOREIGN POLICY 325 courts of Vienna and of Versailles are inciting the Porte to meddle in the affairs of Poland, she writes : ‘ He does not keep his eyes open, for he does not know even what the street children know, or else he says less than he knows.’ Prince Repnine, writing from Warsaw, that in the course of a conversation with the Prussian ambassador, Baron Goltz, the latter has recog- nised that the orders of the King, his master, do not seem to him in the interests of his subjects, though they are perhaps in those of the sove- reign, she annotates : * Is there then auy other glory than the good of the subject. These are oddities beyond my pale.’ In 1780, on the first visit that he makes to the sovereign, Joseph II. is informed of this method of work, and is amazed at it. Up to the time of this meeting, however, which played a decisive part in the history of Catherine, the influence of Panine, as head of the department of foreign affairs, had been very great. It is this influence which, in spite of wind and tide, in spite even of the personal re- pugnance of the Empress, had kept her policy in touch with the Prussian alliance. The visit of Joseph brings about a sudden change. Catherine promptly brushes her minister aside in order to form, on her own account, the new alliance which opens new horizons before her on the side of the North Sea. And soon Panine is quite out of the reckoning. A mere clerk, obedient in carrying out the inspirations of the imperial mind, will suffice. One is soon found, excellent for the purpose, Bezborodko. .‘Properly speaking, the Empress has no longer a minister,’ writes the Marquis de Verac in September i78r. 326 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA \ \ ■J This personal policy, superior as are the qualities of mind and temper of which Catherine gives proof, is not slow to subject her to numer- ous failures. There are infatu^iiflflS,i«£allowed by /disenchantments equally arSitrary. Fancy has full play, and the woman is too often seen in place of the sovereign. It is a woman, and an angry woman, who from the 4th to the 9th of July 1796 draws up for Count Budberg, Russian minister at Stockholm, a communication intended to take the King of Sweden to task for thinking of coming to St. Petersburg without entering into an engagement beforehand to marry the grand-daughter of the Empress. Let him stay at home, then, this ill-bred prince ! She is tired of all the crotchets that cloud his brain. When one means to do anything, one does not make difficulties at every step. The document, an official document which has to pass through the chancellor’s office, is all in this tone. But can it be called a diplomatic communication ? One would say rather, a confidential letter to an in- timate friend, on whom one pours out all one’s wrath and impatience, simply and solely to ease one’s nerves. And to make the resemblance complete, there is a postscript. There are even four, each of which says something different, and indeed precisely opposite, to what has just been said by the last ; the whole summed up by agreeing, unconditionally and without reserve, to the visit which had been so vigorously objected to at the outset. At times Catherine realises the action of her temperament on her state policy, and the unbalanced elements that this influence brings FOREIGN POLICY 327 into it. A^propos of her declaration of armed neutrality, issued April 28, 1780, she writes to Grimm: ‘You will say that it is volcanic, but there was no means of doing- otherwise.’ She adds a reflection which we have already found her making, and which seems to intimate that she has not forgotten her German origin, but still desires to make what capital out of it she can : 'Derm die Teutscheni she ' hassen nicht so als wenn die Leute ihnen auf die Nase spielen voollen ; das liebte der Herr Wagner auck nicht I But this is only a way of putting things, or, at the most, a proof that she sometimes mis- judges the transformation which has taken place in her, and which links her to her adopted country by the deepest fibres of her being ; for h er foreign and home policy alike are esse ntially Russia n, as is her mod e of thinking and feeling, indeed h^ whole natur e. Russian^ ahdT not 1 German, are the personal elements of success j that she puts at the disposal of her ambition, I as are also the defects which hinder their free | course. For there is nothing German in this I way of rushing forward with one’s eyes shut, or dreaming with one’s eyes open, which is peculiar to her, this way of leaving reflection and calculation out of the question. It may be said that her success is due to qualities the most precisely opposed to the German temperament. A cold and calculating German would never have undertaken the first Turkish war. ‘ The army,’ writes Count Simon Vorontsof, ‘was re- duced, imperfect, and scattered all over the empire. It had to march in the depth of winter 328 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA against the Turkish frontier, and the cannons, mortars, bombs, and explosives had to be sent with the greatest possible speed from the arsenal at St. Petersburg to Kief.’ When the second Turkish war and the Swedish war broke out, it was worse still. In 1783 the rupture with the Porte being imminent, a regiment of dragoons, which should have consisted of 1200 to 1500 men, was summoned from Esthonia. Only 700 men were to be found, with 300 horses, and not a single saddle. Catherine was by no means daunted. She had the faith which scorns ob- stacles, and will not admit impossibilities. This faith, which removes mountains, and sets cannons travelling from one end to the other of an empire some thousand miles in length, is not a German quality. Meanwhile, in the domain of foreign politics, Catherine accomplished great things with means which the constant illusion in which she lived doubled or tripled in her eyes, but which were really most moderate. She supplied their lack by her moral force, which was immense. From the point of view of the administration of the department of foreign affairs, she brought a distinct progress to Russia. Nothing daunted by the labour of which Frederick alone among contemporary sovereigns showed himself careful and capable, and adding to it the authority that she always carried with her, she gave to the administration of this department a unity of direction that it had never yet had. At the same time she insisted on habits of probity and professional dignity quite alien to the modes of a not very distant past. In June 1793 the FOREIGN POLICY 329 ,/\ English ambassador Buckingham, urging upon the chancellor Vorontsof the conclusion of a treaty of commerce, thought it quite natural to supplement his demand by the offer of a personal gratuity of £ 2000 . But Vorontsof at once re- plied : ‘ I leave it to those who are well versed in these shameful traffickings to decide whether 2000 or 200,000 pieces would balance the sale of my sovereign’s interests.’ Bestoujef, the chancellor of Elizabeth, did not speak this language. 22 BOOK III THE FRIEND OF 'THE PHILOSOPHERS CHAPTER I LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES I Count Hordt, a Swede, serving in the Prussian army, has left some interesting notes on his visit to St. Petersburg. The first five months of it were spent in prison. This was under the reign of Elizabeth. Peter, on coming to the throne, liberated the prisoner and invited him to dinner. ‘Were you well treated in your captivity?’ asked the Emperor. ‘ Don’t be afraid to tell me.’ ‘Very ill-treated,’ replied the Swede. ‘I had not even any books.’ At that a voice was heard, saying loudly : 'That was barbarous indeed.’ It was the voice ; of Catherine. We shall endeavour to show what were the relations, so often commented upon, but still so little really known, between the Empress and those who were the main instruments of hei European fame. Voltaire and his rivals in the ■ honour and adulation of the ‘Semiramis of the LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 331 North’ demand a separate study. We shall here concern ourselves with Catherine alone. She loved books, as she has abundantly proved. / Her purchase of Diderot’s library is well known. Dorat has celebrated this ac- quisition in an epistle in verse which figures in the edition of his GEuvres Choisis, embellished with a vignette in which are seen little Loves dressed in furs and travelling in sledges. Diderot asked 15,000 francs for his treasure. The Empress offered him 16,000, on condition that the great writer should remain in posses- sion to the time of his death. Diderot thus became, without leaving Paris, librarian of Catherine the Great in his own library. For this he had a pension of 1000 francs a year. It was to commence in 1765. The following year the pension was not paid. This was then the common lot of pensions and pensioners, not only in Russia. On hearing of it from Betzky, Catherine wrote through him to her librarian that she did not wish ‘ the negligenceofjji-official to cause any disturbance to ker^ Ji&fary. and, for this reason, she would send to M. Diderot for fifty years in advance the amount destined to the maintenance and increase of her books, and at the expiration of that period, she would take further measures.’ A bill of exchange for 25,000 francs accompanied the letter. One can imagine the transports of enthusiasm in the philosophic camp. Later on, the library of Voltaire joined that of Diderot in the Hermi- tage collection. It was Grimm who, after the death of the patriarch of Ferney, arranged with Madame Denis for this new acquisition. The 332 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA conditions were, ‘a certain sum’ at the discretion of the Empress, and a statue of Voltaire which she would place in one of the rooms of her palace. Madame Denis relied on the generosity of Catherine, so much belauded by the illustrious dead and by his friends, and Catherine was re- solved, as Grimm expresses it, ‘ to avenge the ashes of the greatest of philosophers from the insults that he had received in his own country.’ The great man’s relatives, his grand-nephews particularly, MM. Mignot and d’Hornoy, pro- tested against the transaction, which, they con- sidered, infringed upon their rights and upon those of France. M. d’Hornoy even attempted to procure an official intervention. But the Empress held to her bargain. Voltaire’s books now form part of the Tmpei 4 al..Ji^ibrary, to which they have been removed from tKe’palace of the Hermitage. A special room is assigned to them. In the middle is the statue of Houdon, a replica, from the hand of the master, of the one in the foyer of the Comedie Francjaise at Paris. There are about 7000 volumes, the greater part half- bound in red morocco. Every volume contains annotations in Voltaire’s handwriting. One need not be a Frenchman to feel, on entering this room, the indefinable sensation caused by the sight of things which are not in their proper place. These relics, the monument of one of the greatest glories of France, should assuredly not be here. These were not, however, the largest part of the additions to the imposing collection of printed books and manuscripts with which Catherine endowed Russia. The king Stanislas Ponia- / LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 333 towski was, we know, a cultivated man. On arriving at the throne, he endeavoured to satisfy his tastes and to share them with his fellow- citizens. The capital of Poland profited by this. It had already a considerable library, founded in 1745 by two brothers, who were distinguished savans and good citizens, the Zaluskis, Ponia- towski enlarged it. On taking possession of Warsaw, Catherine transported the king to St. Petersburg, and the library along with him. Having no longer any political independence, the Poles were supposed to have no longer any need of books. Thus Catherine loved books : did she equally love literature ? The question may seem strange. It demands an answer, nevertheless. The reign of Catherine corresponds, in th e history of literary development in R'trssiaT-tcrajwen-manced epoch. The ^)T€cHnrfg^~ep£iichT'-d6minated by the great figure of Lomonossof, stands out clearly. It wasij during the lifetime of Elizabeth and for some^ years after her death, a period of absorption and' assimilation of foreign elements en masse. Euro- pean culture entered into the national life by the door, one might say rather by the breach that Peter the Great had hewed open. A period of reaction and of struggle followed. The national genius, submerged, trampled upon, oppressed, revolted and demanded back its rights. It came finally to treat foreign litera- ture and science as enemies. The poet Dier- javine, and the satirical journalist and thinker Novikof, were the heroes of this campaign of liberation. What part was played in this crisis by Catherine ? We know what she did with 334 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA Novikof : she broke his pen and his life ; fifteen years of imprisonment were the last reward that she gave to his labours. She treated Dierjavine worse still : she made him a tchinovnik and an abject courtier. For all this there is a reason. Catherine’s was an intelligence specially, and, so to speak, solely organised for politics and the government of men. She is a little German princess, who, at the age'''of fourteen, comes to Russia with the idea thart^ she will be one day the absolute mis- tress this immense empire, and who has con- scientiously applied herself to prepare for the part she will have to play, a part, judging by the examples before her, which has nothing in common with that of a literary Mecaenas. Consequently, all her ideas, all her tastes, are subordinated to this definite conception of her destiny, and of the rights and duties resulting from it. What she appreciates in Voltaire, when the fame and the books of Voltaire reach her, is not the charm of style — does she even know what style is 1 — but the support that the prose, good or bad, of the author, his poetry, melodious and full of senti- ment, or dry and hard to the ear, might afford to the development of the programme of govern- ment that she has vaguely mapped out in her mind. She has no sense of harmony, and, beyond her family relations and her love-episodes, she pays little heed to sentiment. At one moment, at the beginning of her reign, influenced a little by her reading and a great deal by her friend of some years’ standing. Princess Dachkof, she is wishful to take part in the artistic, scientific, and literary movement which she perceives about LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 335 her. She flings herself into the meUe with the ardour she puts into everything. She becomes a writer. She becomes a journalist. But we know already the lamentable shipwreck of her liberal ideas. And what happens to her ideas happens also to her tastes. All the love she may have ever had for letters founders in this disaster, which f even the glory of Voltaire does not survive. But let us first look at her tastes. Voltaire apart, French literature, the only literature with which she is familiar up to a late period of her life, is far from attracting her as a whole. She makes her selection, and what she selects are the works of Le Sage, and those of Moliere and Corneille. After studying Voltaire, she has en- joyed Rabelais, and even Scarron. But she has gone back upon her tastes in this direction, only remembering them with a sort of shame that she has ever had them. As for Racine, she simply does not understand him. He is too literary for her. Literature with him is art for art’s sake, and art for art’s sake, to Catherine, is nonsense. When she applies herself to the task of writing comedies and tragedies, she does not for an instant dream of making a work of art : wha ^t she d _o£s^'^criticisiiV-satireuand^ above all, politics. She attacks the prejudices and vices that she^erceives in the morals of the country, the ideas, and even the men, that offend her. She makes war upon the Martinists, and occa- sionally upon the King of Sweden. Li teratur e, to her, is merely a br anch of her military and repressive power s. Rhetoric, for her, does not exist : she replaces it by logic and her authority as samodierjitsa, ruler of forty millions of men. 336 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA She, nevertheless, makes a solitary choice in the work of Racine : she likes Mithridate. One sees why. Still her disputatious instincts and her moralis- ing intentions come in collision with continual obstacles in the surroundings in which she lives. The incident in connection with Sedaine is charac- teristic in this respect. She had liked Sedaine for his simple gaiety, and the easy flow of his couplets, so pleasantly brought out by the music of Philidor. This pupil of Montesquieu and of Voltaire had a taste for comic opera. In 1779 it occurred to her to utilise, after her own fashion, the talent of the witty and prolific writer. Why should he not compose, on her lines, and for her theatre at the Hermitage, a comedy which might follow up her own satirical pieces? Urged on by Grimm, encouraged by Diderot, Sedaine com- poses a piece, L' Epretwe Inutile. ‘Tell him,’ writes Catherine immediately to Grimm, ‘ that if instead of one, two, or three pieces, he were to do a hundred, I would read them all with the greatest eagerness. You know that, after the Patriarch, there is no one whose writing I like so much as Sedaine’s.’ But Betzky, who has read the piece aloud to his august benefactress, is much less enthusiastic. He points out ‘that the piece, if it were played before the court, would give umbrage to the spectators, and that the master plays a very small part in it.’ Catherine at first rebukes these timid objections ; she intends to have the piece acted, ‘ if it were only to show that she has more credit herself than Raymond.’ Betzky insists ; he considers such a tentative not merely useless, but dangerous ; and LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 337 the Empress finally comes round to his point of view. She tells Sedaine that she thinks his play ‘ good, very good ’ ; she sends him 1 2,oco francs for his trouble, but she informs him that his masterpiece will not be acted, ‘ from precaution.’ L' Epreuve Inutile does not even receive the honours of print. We are unaware if it was pre- served in manuscript. Some years later a polemical writer of quite other range appeared on the scene, before a public at first surprised and terrified, but soon in great part won over, and doing all that could be done to atone for its first scandal by the vehemence of its present applause. Catherine ranges herself on the side of those whom the new work still continues to shock or frighten. ‘If I ever write a comedy,’ she says, ‘ I shall certainly not take the Manage de Figaro as a model, for, after Jonathan Wild, I have never found myself in such bad company as at this celebrated marriage. It is apparently with an idea of imitating the ancients that the theatre has recurred to this taste, from which it had seemed to be purified. The expressions of Moliere were free, and bubbled up like effervescence from a natural gaiety, but his thought is never vicious, while in this popular play the undertone is con- stantly unworthy, and it goes on for three hours and a half. Besides that, it is a mere web of intrigues, in which there is a continual effort, and not a scrap of what is natural. I never laughed once all the time I was reading it.’ But Catherine’s business is not to play the part of a critic, it is to govern Russia, and what Russia needed at this period was assuredly not 338 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA to be set in the van of European progress, intel- lectual and artistic ; it was to follow, at a great distance, those who were ahead, to try to come up with them, not by a servile imitation, but doubtless by finding inspiration in them for the development of the original resources of the national genius. What did Catherine do to help on this event, as was her duty and even her ambition in the radiant days when she accepted the title of ‘the Semiraniis of the North,’ and Voltaire declared that the sun seemed to have taken to shining on the world from another quarter.^ We hold with those who think that the best way of protecting literature that can be found by a ruler, is to leave it alone without interfering in its concerns. Such was not the opinion of Catherine. She wished to assert, in this as in all other domains, her personal initia- tive and her supreme command. She professed in vain to have ‘ a republican soul ’ ; the republic of letters was transformed in her eyes into a monarchy governed by her despotic will. Did she, however, bring to light a force, a glory, or did she even aid the outcome of a new period in letters, which could balance the merit and the reputation of the writers of whom the reign of Elizabeth could legitimately boast ? We cannot see that she did. No name of the importance of Lomonossof and Soumarokof, whose fame belongs to the former reign, can be found in hers. Catherine confined herself to making the most of this heritage, always for her own personal interests, which were far from being those of art and literature. Lomonossof, now grown old, served as a sort of figure-head ; Soumarokof, with his LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 339 imitations of the French dramatists, was suffi- ciently good as a set-off. There was perhaps in Dierjavine the making of a great poet ; she sees nothing of it in him, and in time he ceases to see it in himself. Felitsa, the poem on which his literary reputation rests, is merely a pamphlet done to order, half panegyric, half satire. The panegyric, we need not say, is for the Empress ; the satire for the court nobles, to w’hom Catherine desires to read a lesson, and to whom she sends copies of the work, with the passages concerning them carefully underlined. At the end of the reign the author of Felitsa is a mere buffoon, wallowing in the antechambers of the favourite, Plato Zoubof. The serious rivals of Lomonossof, — those who try to react against the current of foreign importation, by which Soumarokof is carried along, Kherasskof too, in his Rossiade, and Bogdanovitch, in his Dotichenka, made up from the insipidities of the centuries on the subject of the loves of Psyche — Kniajnine, Von- Visine, Lbukine, add some interesting plays to the national drama. Kniajnine writes the Fan- faron, a comedy which remains one of the classics of Russian literature, and, in Vadime a Nov- gorod, attempts the historical drama, drawn from the fresh sources of national tradition. Von- Visine, the Russian Moliere, ridicules in his Brigadier the acquirements of Muscovite Tris- sotins, founded on the reading of French novels ; and, in his Da dais, takes off the educators of aristocratic youth, brought at great expense from abroad. But this national drama is not that of Catherine. She never visits it, until in her later years, when the whim takes her, or rather she finds 340 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA it good policy, to be interested in the dramatisa- tion of scenes taken from the history of the country. Meanwhile, literature, national or otherwise, feels itself so little under her protection, that the contributors to the Sodiessiednik, founded by the Princess Dachkof, dare not sign their articles, even though they are aware that the Empress herself is one of their number. They are not unwise, if one may recall the fate of Prince Bielossielski, who wrote so charming an ‘ Epistle to France,’ won so flattering a reply from Voltaire on ‘the laurels thrown to his compatriots and falling back upon himself,’ and who, then being Minister at Turin, was recalled in disgrace, for no reason but that he was a man of wit, that he showed it in his despatches, and that he turned agreeable verse. Kniajnine, too, knew what it cost to cultivate the national drama. His Vadime a Novgorod was torn up by order of the Empress, and came near being burnt by the public executioner. I An Academy, founded in 1783 on the model of the French Academy, under the inspiration of / /the Princess Dachkof, is the sole monument that /Russian literature owes to a sovereign to whom / Russia owes so much in other respects. To this / Academy was confided the mission of fixing the j rules of orthography, the grammar and prosody, fj of the Russian language, and of encouraging the I study of history. It began, one need hardly say, by undertaking a dictionary, to which Catherine herself contributed. LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 341 II ‘Tragedy offends her, comedy bores her, she does not care_Jiy:--«iusic, her cuisine is quite unst'udiedTTfT gardens she cares only for roses ; she has, in short, no taste for anything but for building and for domineering over her court — for what she has for reigning, and figuring in the world, is a passion.’ It is thus that Durand, the French chargd- d' affaires, summed up, in 1773, the intellectual position of Catherine the Great. His observation was correct, especially from the artistic point of view. Was it lack of knowledge in her, or lack of natural disposition ? It was as much the one as the other. She herself was well aware of it. In 1767, when Falconet submitted to her judg- ment the design for the statue of Peter the Great, she excused herself from passing an opinion ; she understood nothing about it, and she recom- mended the artist to the judgment of his own conscience and of posterity. Falconet was foolish enough to insist — ‘ My posterity is your Majesty. The other may come when it will.’ ‘ Not at all,’ replied Catherine. ‘ How can you submit yourself to my opinion ? I do not even know how to draw. This is perhaps the first good statue I have ever seen in my life. The merest school-boy knows more about your art than I do.’ We often find in her mouth, and in her writing, parti pris oi incompetence and self-abnega- tion, so alien from the general tendency of her mind and temperament. 342 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA She has an opera for which the best singers are sought all over Europe. She pays heavy incomes to the ‘stars,’ whose demands at that time were without limit. But she acknowledges that all this expense is not in the least for her own pleasure. ‘ In music,’ she writes, ‘ I am no more advanced than formerly. I can recognise no tones but those of my nine dogs, who in turn share the honour of being in my room, and whose individual voices I can recognise from a distance ; the music of Galuppi and Paisiello I hear, and I am astonished at the tones that it combines, but I cannot recognise them at all.’ Nevertheless, certain comic operas of Paisiello succeed in charming her. She has a sense an d ~ t^(.ste for the grotesque . She is enchanted by the PuJinoma, and even remembers some of the airs, which she hums over when she happens to meet the maestro. Sometimes, too, even in the domain of art, where she feels so out of place, her despotic instincts claim their rights ; and, as if by miracle, she has certain inspirations which are not without a certain savour. Here is a letter, written at the time of her first triumphs over T urkey — ‘ Since you speak to me of festivities in honour of the peace, listen to what I am going to say, and do not believe a word of the absurdities of the gazettes. The original project was like that of all festivities: temple of Janus, temple of Bacchus, temple of the Devil and his grand- mother, stupid and intolerable allegories, because they were gigantic, and because not to have common sense wa^ supposed to be an effort of genius. Disgusted with all these fine and mighty LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 343 plans, which I positively would not have, one fine day I summon M. Bajenof, my architect, and I say to him : My friend, three versts from the city there is a meadow ; imagine that this meadow is the Black Sea ; that there are two roads leading to it from the city ; well, one of these roads shall be the Tanais, the other the Borysthene ; at the mouth of the first you will build a banqueting- hall, that you will name Azof ; at the mouth of the other you will build a theatre, that you will name Kinburn ; you will trace out with sand the peninsula of the Crimea ; you will there enclose Kertch and lenicale, as ball-rooms ; on the left of the Tanais you will place buffets of wine and eatables for the people ; opposite to the Crimea you will have illuminations which will represent the joy of the two empires over the re-establish- ment of peace ; on the other side of the Danube you will have the fireworks, and on the land which is supposed to be the Black Sea you will place illuminated ships and boats ; you will garnish the banks of the rivers which serve as roads with landscapes, mills, trees, houses, all. lit up ; and there you will have a file without any- thing imaginary in it, but perhaps as good as many others, and much more natural.’ There is something, indeed, very natural and charming in this plan of a fete, but there is also a stroke of policy. There is always this in every- thing that Catherine thinks and does. All her prepossessions, artistic and literary included, tend in this direction. She accumulates in her Her- mitage considerable artistic collections, but she confesses that it is not for love of the things of beauty that are heaped up in the galleries and 344 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA cabinets that she prepares, expressly for them. One cannot delight in what one does not under- stand, and she does not understand in what consists .the merit of a fine picture or of a fine statue. /She admits that it is part of the glory of \J a. great i sovereign to have these things in his palace. All her famous predecessors, all the monarchs in history whose renown she envies or seeks, Louis XIV. at their-Lead, have had them.|/ But she hits'lDTr'tr^drd whichroSnTfng Trdn^ any^ one but herself, would have the air of a cruel epigram, but which characterises the pijrchases, very extensive during the first part of her reign in particular, to which she submits in order to harry out this part of her programme of imperial /magnificence. ‘ It is not love of art,’ she says, ly ‘ it is voracity. I am not an amateur, I am a glutton.’ In 1768 she buys for 180,000 roubles the famous Dyesden-g allery of CounL ...Bfttbk-.-£;X- Minister oT'me King of Poland. In 1772 she purchases, at Paris, the Crozat collection. In reference to this Diderot writes to Falconet : ‘Ah, my friend Falconet, how things have changed! We sell our pictures and our statues in time of peace ; Catherine buys them in time of war. The sciences, the arts, taste, and wisdom, all make for the North, and barbarism with its attendant train comes down upon the South. I have just carried through an important affair : the acquisition of the collection of Crozat, in- creased by his descendants, and known to-day under the name of the gallery of the Baron de Thiers. There are Raphaels, Guidos, Poussins, Van Dycks, Schidones, Carlo Lottis, Rem- brandts, Wouvermans, Teniers, etc., to the LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 345 number of about eleven hundred. It has cost her Imperial Majesty 460,000 francs. That is not half its value.’ Her usual good luck accompanied Catherine in these proceedings. Three months later, fifty pictures of not greater worth were sold for 440,000 francs at the sale of the Due de Choiseul’s collection. She herself paid 30,000 francs to Mme. Geoffrin for two pictures of Van Loo, La Conversation Espagnole and La Lecture Espagnole. It is true that this is, perhaps, on her part, a way of establishing friendly relations with the in- fluential matron, who gains on the bargain two- thirds of the amount. She has one misfortune, in 1771, with the Braancamp collection, bought in Holland for 60,000 ecus, which goes down on the coast of Finland with the vessel that brings it. But, says Catherine, there is only 60,000 6cus lost. She can easily make up for the rest. She buys en bloc the engraved gems of the Due d’Orleans. Through Grimm and Diderot she sends order after order to French artists : from Chardin and Vernet she demands landscapes; from Houdon a Diana (which has been refused admittance at the Louvre, on the ground that it is too little clothed) ; from Vien, a ceiling for the grand staircase at Tzarskoie-Sielo ; from the painter on enamel, De Mailly, an artistic inkstand for the room of the Order of St. George, for which he charges 36,000 francs, and wMch he executes very unwillingly, and only on being forced to do so by an intervention of Government. In 1778 she has copies made at Rome, by Gunterberger and Reifenstein, of the frescoes of Raphael in the Vatican ; and she has a gallery 23 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 346 erected a^die.H.extnitage with panels of the same dimerisloh to receive these copies, which, being done on canvas, have been since utilised in the reconstruction of the palace. They can still be seen there. In 1790, in sending tojidturn her portrait, ‘ in a fur cap,’ she writes : ‘ Here is sorii^'’ thing for your museum ; mine, at the Hermitage, consists of pictures, the panels of Raphael, 38,000 ^ooks, four rooms filled with books and prints, Vo, 000 engraved gems, nearly 10,000 drawings, and aTaWrreriyf~ifatljiral history contained in two large rooms. All that is accompanied by a charming theatre, admirably adapted for seeing and hearing, and also as to seating accommodation, and with no draughts. My little retreat is so situated that to go there and back from my room is just 3000 paces. There I walk about in the midst of a quantity of things that I love and delight in, and these winter walks are what keep me in health and on foot.’ All that is her own doing. In accomplishing it she has had to fight with serious difficulties, for, though she may make gold at will, her power in this respect is unlimited only within the limits of her empire — outside, the paper money loses too much in change. Thus, from the year 1781 she feels obliged to use moderation. She writes to Grimm : ‘ I renew my resolution to buy nothing more, not a picture, nothing ; I want nothing more, and consequently I give up the Correggio of “the divine.” ’ That is indeed a ‘glutton’s’ vow, as valid as a drunkard’s ! A veritable conflict commences, from this moment, in the mind of Catherine, between her desires as a collector, now a passion with her, and her forced instincts of LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 347 economy. It is not the latter that most generally win the day. The letter to Grimm that we have just cited is dated March 29; on the 14th of April we find in the correspondence of the Empress with her art-purveyor this passage : ‘if “the divine” [Reiffenstein] would send her, direct to St. Petersburg, some very very fine old cameos, in one, two, or three colours, in perfect state and keeping, we should be infinitely obliged to those who would procure them for us. That is not to be called a purchase, but what is one to do?’ And on the 23rd she writes : ‘ Now, you may say what you like, you may rail at me as you please, but I must have two copies of coloured prints, according to the list I am going to give you . . . for we are gluttons, and so gluttonous for everything of that kind, that there is no longer a house in St. Petersburg where one can decently live if it does not contain something faintly resembling the panels, the Eternal Father, or the whole string that I have enumerated.’ ‘ Lord, one would say that the good resolutions of Thine anointed are wavering ! ’ observes Grimm maliciously in his reply. He has his doubts, too, as to what has provoked this return of ‘gluttony.’ In using the collective pronoun ‘us,’ Catherine does not use the plural instead of the singular by a mere trick of speech. The ‘ gluttons ’ of whom she speaks are indeed two at present. After the favourite Korssakof, who was a mere boor, has come, since the end of 1780, the handsome Lanskoi, who is a man of education and refined tastes. And the handsome Lanskoi has a real passion for prints and cameos. In July 1781, sending Grimm new orders for 348 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA purchases, Catherine explains that these are not for her, ‘but for gluttons who have become gluttons through knowing me.’ The money is certainly hers, that is to say, Russia’s. In 1784 she renews her resolution of buying nothing more, ‘being poor as church mice.’ But Lanskoi sends 50,000 francs to Grimm ‘for the purchase of a cabinet of pictures,’ and promises a further amount shortly. This new course of things goes on for some time. In 1784, it is true, there is a momentary pause ; C^thef 4 fte..^will have no more cam'eosy-4xQtc»...anyjdwlTg of the iclrid. Lanskoi is dead, and with him is dead also the taste for things which, as she frankly confesses, she does not understand a bit. But in April 1785 it begins again. What has happened Mamonof has taken the place of Lanskoi, and with the place he seems to have inherited the artistic tastes of the deceased. It is not till 1794 that this intermittent fever comes finally to an end. ‘ I shall not buy anything more,’ says Catherine, on January 13. ‘I must pay my debts and save up money ; so refuse all the bargains that are offered you.’ It is Plato Zoubof who reigns now, and Zoubof cares for nothing engraved save the gold circles bearing the effigy of his imperial mistress. Up to now the Empress has not merely been increasing her collections ; she has also been building. We should say, she has especially been building. And this time the pleasure has all been her own, as Durand intimated in 1773. We have seen what the Prince de Ligne thought of the sovereign’s taste and knowledge in regard to architecture. But in default of judgment and LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 349 sense of proportion she has at least plenty of spirit. She replaces artistic sense by enthusiasm, and quality by quantity. ‘You know,’ she writes in 1779, ‘that the mania of building is stronger with us than ever, and no earthquake ever demolished so many buildings as we have set up.’ She adds in German these sad re- flections : ‘ The mania of building is an infernal thing ; it runs away with money, and the more one builds, the more one wants to build ; it is a disease, like drunkenness.’ At this moment she gpnrlg fn pnmp fr.r f-wr> architects — Giadomo Trontbara and Geronino Quarenghi. She thus explains her choice : ‘ I want Italians because our Frenchmen know too much, and make horrid houses, inside and out, because they know too much.’ Alway s the same contempt for care, the same penchant for impro- visatibirr ^SFe "nevertheless frequently consults the learned Clerisseau, who sends her plans of palaces in the Roman style. Perronnet furnishes her with the scheme of a bridge over the Neva ; Bourgeois de Chateaublanc, another of a light- house for the shores of the Baltic. In 1765 she demands of Vasse a design for an audience- chamber 1 20 feet long and 62 high. With all that, does she give good cause to artists, whether architects, painters, or sculptors, to praise her treatment of them ? Let us not ask Falconet, on his return from St. Petersburg; his reply would be too bitter. We shall have to speak elsewhere of the visit to the capital of the North of the man to whom the city of Peter the Great and of Catherine owes to this very moment its finest ornament. We shall try also to show what were 350 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA his relations with the sovereign, beginning, on her part, with more than courtesy, and ending with more than indifference. Let us say here that, not having the least comprehension of artistic things, Catherine could not in any way be likely to understand the soul of an artist. Falconet pleased her at first by his original and somewhat paradoxical turn of mind, still more perhaps by the oddities of his disposition ; she soon grew tired, and finally impatient of him. He was too much of an artist for her liking. She had always her own way of interpreting the part to be played in the world by the men of talent whom she wished to employ in improving her capital. She frankly confesses it in one of her letters to Grimm : ‘ Si il signor marchese del Grimmo volio mi fare a pleasure, he will have the goodness to write to the divine Reif- fenstein to look me out two good architects, Italians by birth and skilled in their profession, whom he will engage in the service of her Imperial Majesty of Russia for so many years, and whom he will send from Rome to St. Petersburg like a bundle of tools! Tools — it is just that; tools that one uses, anf jvthen throws away when they are done with, or one finds better and handier ones at hand. It was thus that she did with Falconet. She gives this further piece of advice to Grimm : * He will choose honest and reasonable people, not dreamers like Falconet ; people who walk on the earth, not in the air.’ She will have nothing aspiring. * A Michael Angelo,’ it has been justly said, ‘ would never have remained three weeks at the court of Catherine.’ To remain there nearly twelve years, required in Falconet an extra- LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 351 ordinary power of resistance, and a veritable passion for the work he had begun, into which he had put all his soul. But when at last he went, he was broken down. Apart from him, Catherine did not keep by her any foreign artists who were not mediocrities ; Brompton, an English painter, a pupil of Mengs, and Koenig, a German sculp- tor. Brompton paints allegories which delight the sovereign, for they are political allegories. ‘ He has painted my two grandsons, and it is a charming picture : the elder amuses himself by cutting the Gordian knot, and the other has proudly put the flag of Constantine about his shoulders.’ Koenig does a bust of Patiomkine. Mme. Vigee-Lebrun, arriving at St. Petersburg in 1795 with an achieved reputation, meets with a flattering reception everywhere but at the court — Catherine finds little pleasure in her society, and considers her pictures so bad ‘ that one must have a very distorted sense of things to paint like that.’ And the Russian artists — what does she do in this respect.^ Does she try to r^iscover native talent ,^ to encourage it, and bring it to the front? The list of nationdP glories, cc gj smporaneous with her reign, is easy to establish in this sphere. There is Scorodoumof, an engraver, who had studied art in France, and whom she sent for at Paris in 1782, in order to take him into her service; and whom a traveller, Portia de Piles, found, a few years later, in an empty studio, engaged in polishing a copper plate for a wretched design done to order : he explained that there was not a workman in St. Petersburg capable of doing this kind of work ; was astonished that a 352 CATHERINE II. CjF RUSSIA stranger took any interest in what he was doing; was quite resigned to the low uses of his pro- fession. There is Choubine, a sculptor, dis- covered by the same visitor in a narrow room, without models, without pupils, with only one order, a bust, for which an admiral has offered him loo roubles, the marble itself costing 8o roubles, which he has to take out of the price. There is, lastly, the painter Lossienko. Here is what Falconet says of him: ‘The poor fellow, starving and in the depths of misery, wishing to live anywhere but at St. Petersburg, came and told me all his troubles ; then, sinking into drunk- enness in his despair, he little knew what he would gain by dying : we read on his tombstone that he was a great man ! ’ The glory of Catherine wanted one great man the more, and she had him cheaply. The artist once dead, she willingly added his apotheosis to all her grandeurs. She had not taken any pains to keep him alive. All her artistic ideas reduce themselves, in the last resort, to a question of show. And, for this object, the ‘ divine ’ Reiffenstein, whose name is known all over Eun ^ ;, is obviously worth more than the poor Lossienko, though he was no more than a good copyist. National art, in short, owes to Catherine /some models furnished by her to the study and emulation j^f Russian artists. Beyond that, she did not givv, it so much as a morsel of bread. CATBERWE AS A WRITER 3S3 CHAPTER II CATHERINE AS A WRITER I Durand certainly made a mistake in his reckon- ing when giving his list of the things in which Catherine took pleasure. He forgot one at least of her favourite pastimes : she like d to write.^ We do not believe there was anything she liked so much. It was not only a taste in her — it was in some sort a necessity, almost a physical neces- sity. It seems that the mere fact of holding a pen in her hand, and having before her a white sheet of paper, on which she can set her fancy roving, gives her a pleasant sensation, not only mental, but like a thrill of physical delight. She says herself, in one of her letters to Grimm, that the sight of a new pen makes her fingers itch. She never dictates. ‘ I do not know how to dictate,’ she says. All that she writes is witten with her own hand, and what does she not' ,’fite ? / Besides her political correspondence, which is very active, and her private correspondence, which, with the enormous budgets sent regularly to Grimm, attains huge proportions ; besides her work in regard to signatures, to rep -its sent in to her, which she covers with marginal notes, to her dramatic and other compositions, she writes much and often for herself, for her own satisfac- tion, sometimes for no apparent reason, unless for that of calming that itching of the fingers. She / 354 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA makes extracts from old chronicles relating to the life and glorious actions of St. Sergius, in which we cannot imagine that she has any particular interest. She works at copying the old church Sclavonic, an acquaintance with which would not seem to be indispensable to her duties as Orthodox sovereign. Sho cannot read a book without covering the margins with her great scrawling writing. She draws up plans for and pro- grammes for concerts. Contrary to that statesman of our days who could only think when he was talking, one might say of her that she could only Ihink when writing. So, like the other with his words, she was carried away by what she wrote. Her pen ran away with her thought, and sent it astray. She was well aware of it herself. She wrote to Grimm — ‘ I was going to say that I would write for you, so much in the scribbling mood am I ; but I recollect that I am here and you in Paris. I advise you to dictate, for I have been advised a hundred times to do so myself : happy is the man who can do so ; for my part, it would be impossible to talk nonsense with the pen of another. ... If I said to this other what flows from my pen, he would often not write what I said.’ How does she find the time to write all that she writes ? She rises at six o’clock in the morning to chat at her ease with her confidant, pen in hand. Despite these laborious habits, the question remains for us an enigma. On May 7, 1767, the Empress, on a voyage of inspection, finds herself on the Volga in ‘ frightful’ weather. She takes the opportunity to write a long letter CATHERINE AS A WRITER 355 to Marmontel, who has just sent her his Bdlisaire. It is miraculous. Note that, thinking and writing being the same thing to her, and her inaptitude to precede the manual labour of putting things down by the intellectual labour of putting them together being complete, she goes over and over again anything to which she attaches much importance. We have thus two rough drafts of a letter addressed by her in 1768 to the Aca- demy of Berlin, which had offered her the title of honorary member. She sometimes makes more, for she does not like erasures. If the expression or the phrase which comes up does not suit her, she throws aside the sheet — generally a large-sized sheet, gilt-edged — and begins over again. Her phraseology is at times very happy, trans- lating her thought with a single vigorous or pictures que expressio n. In refusing to evacuate the Crimea, as the cowardice of Patiomkine ad- vises her in 1 788, and looking for arguments to justify her decision, she writes : ‘ Does a man who is in the saddle get down in order to hold on to the horse’s tail.^’ Her letters, especially her letters to Grimm, are full, at the same time, of words and turns of phrase in which the bonhomie and carelessness of thought and lan- guage alike are unbounded, and sometimes be- come positively gross. Not content with inter- larding her incorrect French with German or Italian words and phrases, she often writes in slang. She puts ‘sti-la’ for ‘celui-la,’ ‘ ma ’ for ‘mais.’ Probably she speaks in the same way. She is not averse from a certain triviality. We shall not venture to reproduce here the gaul- CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 356 oiseries —diVe. they indeed gauloiseries ? — which sometimes crop up when she is in the jocose and familiar vein, and we should certainly tire or even disgust our readers with the quips and quibbles which she is for ever sprinkling over her epistolary conversation. It is true that this is her ‘undress’ style, her language of asides: — LCT'US 'see now What is her style as a writer, her way of writing for the public. II It is in her works written for the s£^e that the pen of Catherine is most prolific. She does j^something of everything in literature, but espe- cially dramatic writing. r ‘You ask me,’ she writes to Grimm, ‘why I ^ write so many comedies. I will reply, like M. Pince, with three reasons : primo, because it amuses me ; secundo, because I should like to restore the national theatre, which, owing to its lack of new plays, is somewhat gone out of fashion ; and tertio, because it was time to put down the visionaries who were beginning to hold up their heads. Le Trompeur and Le Trompd have had a prodigious success. . . . The. most amusing part of it is that at the first performance there were cries of “ Author ! ” who, how'ever, kept completely incognito, despite his huge success. Each of these pieces has brought in, at Moscow, 10,000 roubles to the management.”’^! It is not needful, we see, to be an author played at Paris to secure the welcome that a happy idea always receives from the public, and CA THERINE AS A WRITER 357 the imperial diadem does not preclude happy ideas. In Le Trojnpenr and Le Trompd Catherine has brought Cagliostro and his dupes on the stage. The greater part of her plays are thus polemical or satirical, philosophical, social, or religious. She bravely attacks the ideas or tendencies, or even persons, that she disapproves of or dislikes. One may say that she has put into them her best work as a writer. She has, nevertheless, not the least sense of the dramatic. The dramatic element, properly speaking, is absent from her comedies as from her serious dramas. There is no art of composition, no knowledge of effect, no creative faculty, not a type among all these characters ; but here and there certain traits caught sur le vif in the manners of the country, a certain wit, good- humour, and a real gift of observation. The general tendency is that of Voltaire, toned down by the respect of certain sentiments, the religious sentiment among others, which she is obliged to treat so carefully in the surroundings in which she is placed. The principal aim is to oppose the current of mysticism which begins to. penetrate the upper strata of society, finding in the natural leanings of the Russian mind an element highly favourable to its propagation. It is with Free- masonry and Martinism that she has most often a bone to pick. One day she assimilates the Freemasons to the Siberian sect of Chamanes, whom she tries to turn into ridicule by accusing them of extorting money from the weak-witted folk on whose credulity they trade. This is the theme of Chamane Sibirski (Chamane of Siberia), 3S8 CATHERINE H. of RUSSIA a piece for which an article in the Encyclopddie (Theosophy) has furnished her with the canvas ; it is also that of Obmanchtchik (The Deceiver), and Obolchtchenie (The Deceit). But she also attacks occasionally other errors and absurdities. One of the characters of O Vremia ! (translated into French under the title, O temps ! O mceurs /), Madame Hanjahina, in the fervour of her religious devotion, is in the act of performing fifty genu- flections before a holy image. A peasant enters, and, after kissing his mistress’s feet, puts a paper into her hand. How dare he trouble her at such a moment. ‘ Leave me, demon, imp of hell ! ’ she cries. ‘ Fear the wrath of God, and mine.’ She nevertheless glances at the paper: it is a petition, on the part of a lover who wishes to marry, and who, in his capacity of serf, requires the authorisation of his mistress. ‘ The idea of coming and disturbing with such requests a pro- prietress of serfs, who is at her devotions ! ’ Mme. Hanjahina turns the luckless importunate out of doors, and returns to her genuflections. But she has lost the reckoning. Must she do them all over again ? She begins the task, but before beginning she summons her people, and orders them to give fifty times fifty blows to the peasant, who must have been sent by Satan him- self, and who shall never marry, let him be assured of that, as long as she lives and continues to reverence the holy images. Catherine also, it appears, wrote -^etion.. In the third volume of his History of German Literature, Kurtz includes the Empress among the number of German writers of the eighteenth century, as author of an Eastern romance. CA THERINE AS A WRITER 359 Obidack, written in 1786. He attributes to her several other works in her mother tongue, of which he does not mention the titles. We have also some fragments of the Empress’s work as a fabulist. In writing for her grand- children one of the tales that Grimm published for the first time in 1790, in his Correspondence, Catherine was a little out of her reckoning. The Tsarevitch Chlore, as well as the Tsarevitch Febei, are philosophical tales in the style of Voltaire, with allegorical turns, moralising intentions, and scientific pretensions, quite out of the range of childish minds. Catherine had, nevertheless, what we now CaTT* a knowledge of children,’ the art of putting herself on the level of young, fresh, naive imaginations ; she had also a love of children. But, pen in hand, sh forgot what she knew the best. given evidence, in these compositions, of much fertility of invention, or of a particularly in- genious turn of mind, or an original inspiration. She has once again stolen some one’s ideas— those of Jean-Jacques and of Locke this time. Finally, Catherine has had her poetical moments. The taste came to her late in life. ‘Imagine,’ she writes in 1787, to Grimm, ‘that on my galley, going down the Borysthene, he The Comte de Segur] wanted to teach me to write verse ! I have been rhyming for the last four days, but it takes too much time, and I have begun too late.’ Nevertheless, the year before, she had already asked Chrapowicki to send her a dictionary of Russian rhymes, if there was one in existence. We do not know what success attended her 36 o CATHERINE 11. of RUSSIA secretary’s researches in this direction, but after 1788 we often enough find the Empress rhym- ing, both in Russian and in French. In August 1788 she writes burlesque verses on the King of Sweden, while composing a French comedy, Les Voyages de Madame Bontemps, which she intends to have acted, by way of surprise, in the apartments of the favourite Mamonof on his birthday. In January 1789 she sends to Chrapo- wicki two Russian quatrains on the taking of Otchakof. One of them is somewhat remark- able for its vigour of thought and the energy of some expressions. As for the poetic form, it escapes our estimation. Here is a French qua- train, without date, which will permit the reader to see for himself the skill of Catherine in this branch of literature. It is an epitaph composed by her on the occasion of the death of the Count I. I. Chouvalof, who, since 1777, had been the Empress’s high chamberlain — ‘ Ci git Monseigneur le grand chambellan A cent ans blanc comme Milan ; Le voilk qui fait la moue ; Vivant il grattait la joue.' We shall doubtless be excused from giving more. yji. Catherine also undertook to tr^^i^late the Iliad. Three sheets of attempts in her hand- writing are preserved in the archives of the A empire. Certainly, she attempted many things. / j CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 361 CHAPTER III CATHERINE AND EDUCATION I The institutions founded by Catherine for the furtherance of national education, her educational ideas and writings, hold too large a place in the history of her reign, and in that of the intellectual development of her people, for us to omit some consideration of them in this study, brief as must be the space that we can give them. On arriving at power, Catherine was quick to see what ad- vantage she had derived, in the struggle from which she had come out victorious, from the superiority of her intellectual culture, the relative extent and variety of her knowledge. At the same time, she was able to judge how much it cost in Russia, even on the throne, to arrive at the little knowledge that she possessed. Finally, the handling of power must soon have shown her the enormous difficulties that the best-inten- tioned rulers have always had to meet with from the ignorance of their subjects. The reform, or rather the establishment, oLiiatiofial-education is, from the first, one of the princi pal ideas brought by the Empress to the government of her empire." In this regard she had everything, or almost everything, to do. The lower classes did not count, the middle class hardly existed ; there was therefore nothing to do but to raise the level of studies at the summit of the social ladder,/ CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 362 But this level was terribly low. The children of the nobility were brought up by serfs or by foreign tutors. We can guess what they had to learn from the former ; as for the latter, we can guess also what sort of people they were — French for the most part — who at that time entered upon the career of private tutor in the far-distant Russia. Mehee de la Touche tells the story of the governess who, being asked by the parents of her future charge if she spoke French, replied: ' Sacridid ! I should think so; it is my own language.’ She was engaged without further question; only, the name of Mile. Sacredie always stuck to her. ^ As ever, Catherine would do everything, and everything at once. I n the second year of herp'eign, “-Betzky, the collaborator whom she picked out for this pirrpese,.,X£jcdwed''the order to set to work on a project, which included a whole new system of education, able to serve- as basis for a number of scholastic institutions, to be set on foot sub- sequently. The result was the publication, in 1764, of General Regulations for the Education of Children of both Sexes. Betzky has admitted that the ideas developed in this document were those of the Empress herself. They must be considered bold, if not original : they are more or less those of Locke and of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ; those of Jean-Jacques especially, little as Catherine generally professed to think of his genius. It was a project for fabricating men and women not in the least like any that had ever been seen in Russia, taken radically away from the soil which had given them birth, transplanted from their natural surroundings, and developed CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 363 in an atmosphere artificially prepared for the culture to whicli they were destined. They were to be taken at the age of five or six, kept strictly shut up, and removed from all outside influence, to the age of twenty or more. Catherine seriously thought of carrying out this programme. If this was not done, at least within the desired limits and proportions — that is to say, throughout the whole length and breadth of public education — it is because she encountered great difficulties on the way, and that here, too, patience, firmness of resolution, and continuity of effort were once again lacking to her will. Difficulties arose at the outset from the opposition that she met with, not only in her immediate surroundings — but little enlightened itself, as a rule, and con- sequently indifferent, if not hostile, to the develop- ment of any programme whatever, relating to this order of ideas — but also among even the most open-minded and cultivated of those to whom she could appeal, outside the official sphere, for some amount of help in her enterprise. The ideas of Jean-Jacques were by no means those of Novikof, for example, nor those of the circle in which the influence of the publicist was exercised. Now, this was perhaps the most intelligent circle in the Russia of that time. Novikof had pedagogic views of his own, entirely different, giving a large place, in national education, to local feeling, to custom, tradition, to the ways of the country, averse from the introduction of. foreign elements. As for the officials at Catherine’s disposal, they were inclined to ask whether public education, and schools in general, were of any real value. In 1785, atone of the Empress’s evening recep- 364 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA tions, as Patiomkine was discussing the necessity of starting a large number of universities through- out Russia, Zavadofski, the director of the recently established normal schools, observed that the University of Moscow had not produced a single distinguished man in science during the whole of its existence. ‘ That,’ replied Patiom- kine, ‘ is because you hindered me from continuing my studies by turning me out.’ This was a fact ; the favourite had been sent down, and obliofed to enter a regiment, which was the beginning of his fortune. He forgot to say that his idleness and misconduct had quite justified the punishment. Catherine thereupon declared that she herself owed much to the university education : since she had had in her service some men who had carried out their studies at Moscow, she had been able to make out something in the memoranda and other official documents presented for her signature. It was after this conversation that s ^ decide d upon founding the Universities-''T5r'^jni-Nov- gorod, and lekatierinoslaf. But the' latter town had itself yet to be founded. Another difficulty presented itself in the selec- tion of a staff of teachers. In organising the establishment of the corps of cadets, Betzky took for director a former prompter from the French theatre, and for inspector of classes a former valet de chambre of Catherine’s mother. One of the professors, P'aber, had been a lackey in the service of two other French professors, Pictet and Mallet, whose colleague he now became. Pictet and Mallet having ventured to protest, Betzky contented himself with giving Faber the rank of lieutenant in the Russian army. CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 365 which, it appeared, put things straight. The master of police in the establishment was a certain Lascaris, a mere adventurer, who after- wards became director, with the title of lieutenant- colonel. The greatest liberty reigned in this school, if w'e may believe the testimony of Bobrinski, the natural son of Catherine, who was brought up there: the ideas of Jean-Jacques were liberally applied. Catherine was thus forced to complicate her programme of scholastic organisation ; she had first to think of trajMiiig 4ke ffm^rs ~{or the future pupils that she meant to intrust to them. She sent to^xford, to_^^-AcadeilT^of Turin, to the schools irTGefrhahy, young men'Who were to be prepared for the delicate duties of professorship. But many other things were yet wanting for the founding of national schools, and first, to know how to set about it. She confessed it naively to C^mm — U Listen a moment, my philosophical friends ; you would be charming, adorable, if you would have the charity to map out a plan of study for young people, from A B C to the University. 1 am told that there should be three kinds of schools, and I who have not studied and have not been at Paris, I have neither knowledge nor insight in the matter, and consequently I know not what should be learnt, nor even what can be learnt, nor where one is to find out unless from you. I am very much concerned about an idea for a university and its management, a gym- nasium and its management, a school and its management, j 366 CATHERINE IT. OF RUSSIA She intimates, however, the means by which she intends to get over the difficulty for the present — ‘ Until you accede or do not accede to my request, I know what I shall do : I shall hunt through the EncyclopMie. Oh, I shall be certain to haul out what I want and what I don’t want.’ The philosophers remaining silent, it is the Encyclopedic that has to afford matter for the conceptions to which the universal genius of Catherine betakes itself, in this new order of things. II These conceptions were destined to remain sterile, with one exception. Some scholastic establishments date, it is true, from her reign. But these are special schools, that, for instance, of artillery and engineering, founded in 1762, /the school of commerce founded in 1772, the academy of mines in 1773, the academy of Beaux Arts in 1774. In 1781 there was even an attempt at popular schools, and in 1783 Jankovitz was summoned for the foundation of normal schools, after the order of those in Austria. Ten were at once founded at St. Petersburg, and the following year they had 1000 pupils. Catherine was full of enthusiasm on the subject, and wrote to Grimm : ‘ Do you know that we are really doing fine things, and getting along famously, not in the air (for, from dread of fire, I have expressly forbidden aerostatic globes) but ventre d terre, for the enlightening of the people.’ CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 367 In reply Grimm conferred upon the sovereign the title of Universal-normalschulmeisterin. But all that was not the national education according to Locke and J ean-J acques, of which the Empress dreamed, and which ought, she thought, to regenerate Russia. The dream was unrealised save in the establishment founded in 1764 for the education of girls, in the famous SmoInyi_ Monastyr, which was one of the favourite achiei:^ements of Catherine, the one among all others to which she was most constant ; the majestic edifice on the banks of the Neva is even now the admiration of travellers from the West. Demoiselles nobles are still educated there in the most careful manner, and but lately the two daughters of the Prince of Montenegro grew up within these walls, where so often the Empress was to be seen surrounded by her pupils, following their studies with solicitude, and in- teresting herself in their recreations. Rigorous seclusion, during twelve years, the removal of all outside influences, even family influences, even religious influences : all the details of the plan sketched out in 1764 were to be found in the scheme of this institution. No one was allowed to go out, except to go to the court, whither the Empress frequently summoned the scholars whom she had particularly noticed. There were hardly any .holidays. Every six weeks the parents were admitted to see their children, and to witness a public examination which showed what progress they were making. That was all. The lay schoolmistresses never spoke to their pupils of God or the Devil save in general terms, without any attempt at proselytism ; the clergy 368 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA were admitted to this singular monastery, and to some part in the instruction given there, but within prescribed limits. It was a convent having as abbess a philosophising Empress ; monastic life Avith a door of communication opening on the splendours and seductions of the imperial palace ; St. Cyi;, minus Christianity, and not merely the severe ^nd gloomy Christianity of Madame de Maintenis^n, but Christianity in general. A long- bearded ope was sometimes seen there ; the Christian 'peach ing was absejiU— -The very plan of the estabhshmem; was ^^en to it, for could anything b« more absolutely contrary to its spirit than the separation into two divisions of the inmates, kepj; absolutely apart and distinct, by the very first \principles of the undertaking.^ In this establishr^ent, in which there is room for 500 pupils, there are daughters of the nobility and of the middle clisses. They have nothing in com- mon one with ^another, either in mode of living, of education, o|r even of costume. The former are indulged with fine clothes, the refinements of the toilette, of ;he table, and of accommodation, a course of study in which the arts of pleasing hold a large place ; the latter have to put up with a coarse kind of (clothing, with simple dishes, with lessons in se\j^ing, washing, and cooking. The colour of the dothes is the same, but the ‘ corset ’ takes the place of the elegant ‘fourreau,’and is com- pleted by a pinafore, which denotes the humility of their coi/dition. All that is Pagan, utterly Pagan, as the plan of the teaching itself, into which Diderot would have wished to introduce thorough instruction in anatomy ; as are the sallies into the frivolous and corrupt world of the court. \ CA THERINE AND EDUCA TION 369 As it has been noted, Catherine is the first Russian sovereign to give attention to the educa- tion of women. She gave to her undertaking all the breadth and magnificence that we find in all her creations, and that would seem to be in some sort the natural emanation of herself. But she also put to proof principles which she had not sufficiently gauged. The germs that she thus introduced into the intellectual and moral develop- ment of her sex still bear fruit in Russia, not perhaps always for the best. We have had means of judging, in the Empress’s confidences to Grimm, what point she had reached, after fifteen years of sway, in her own studies and notions in regard to this delicate and difficult matter : she obviously went right ahead, picking up principles and ideas for her plans of education as she picked up soldiers for her plans of conquest. In the very numerous writings on educational subjects that she has handed down to posterity, some ideas and in- genious intuitions alternate with the most para- doxical assertions, as, for example, that ‘ the study of languages and sciences ought to hold the last place in education,’ or that ‘the health of the body and the inclination of the mind towards what is good make up the whole of education.’ The idea of enlightened despotism, coming out in the blind subjection of pupil to master, accords as best it can with that of the progressive develop- ment of the spirit of independence, in which one is to endeavour to fortify the child’s mind. As a whole it is almost incoherent. Catherine saw clearly that the way in which the youth of Russia in her time was educated was useless 370 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA alike to them and to Russia, and she admitted the necessity of a change of system, as an abso- lute necessity of national progress. It was only on this one point that she had quite made up her mind. At her time, and in the place that she occupied, coming after Ann, Elizabeth, and Peter III., it was something already to have made this discovery and cherished this conviction. But the glory of having been the founder of the national education was not to be hers. The judgment of posterity has given this title to a name more humble than hers, that of a man whom she treated as a foe, to whom she gave a dungeon and a chain as the reward of the labours of which Russia reaps the benefit to-day. It was in the educational establishments founded at St. Petersburg by Novikof that the programme of studies and the plan of scholastic organisation now in force throughout the empire were really mapped out. BOOK IV INNER ASPECTS CHAPTER I HOME LIFE I We shall try to give an account of a single day in the life of the Empress, an ordinary day, one of those which show the habitual course of her existence. We are in winter, let us suppose, and about the middle of the reign, in 1785 for example, a year of peace. The Empress occu- pies the Zimnyi Dvariets, the Winter Palace. The private suite of rooms, on the first story, is not very large. On mounting the little stair- case, we come to a room in which a table, covered with writing materials, awaits the secre- taries and others employed in her Majesty’s immediate service. We pass through this first room, and enter the dressing-room, whose win- dows look out on the square of the palace. It is there that the Empress’s hair is dressed before a small circle of intimate friends and high functionaries, admitted to the early morning audiences. It is the petit lever of her Majesty. There is no grand lever. Two doors open 371 u -- 372 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA before us : one leads to the Diamond Room, the other to the bedroom. The bedroom communi- cates at the back with a private dressing-room, and at the left with a work-room opening on the Mirror Room, and the other reception-rooms. It is six. n’f;1 ppk.Jja the morning, the hour at which the Empress rises. By the side of her bed is a basket, where, on a couch of pink satin ornamented with lace, sleeps a whole family of little dogs, Catherine’s inseparable companions. They are English greyhounds. In 1770 Dr. Dimsdale, whom the Empress, as we know, sum- moned from London to inoculate her, brought over for her a couple of these creatures. They have increased and multiplied, so that one sees a greyhound in all the aristocratic houses in St. Petersburg. The Empress always has half a dozen about her, sometimes more. The bell- ringer of the palace having rung the hour of six, Maria Savichna Pierekousihina, the head femme de chambre of her Majesty, enters the bedroom. Eormerly Catherine had no one about her at this time ; she rose by herself, and in winter even lit her own fire. Time has changed this habit. But to-day her Majbsty is late in waking. The night before she was not so early as usual in going to bed ; an interesting conversation detained her at the Hermitage after ten. Maria Savichna coolly finds a divan, opposite to the sovereign’s bed, lies down on it, and seizes the happy chance of a little additional nap. But now the Empress awakens. She gets up, and in her turn awakens the slumbering Maria Savichna. She goes into her dressiaff-— room. A little warm water to rinse out her HOME LIFE 373 mouth, and a little ice to rub over her face, are all that her Majesty is in need of for the moment. But where is Catherine Ivanovna, the young Calmuck, whose business it is to have these things ready ? She is always behind her time, this Catherine Ivanovna ! What, already a quarter past six ! The Empress has a move- ment of impatience ; she taps her foot nervously on the ground. Here she is at last : beware of her Majesty’s wrath ! Catherine snatches from her hands the silver-gilt ewer, and, hastily making use of it, she apostrophises the lazy girl— ‘ What are you thinking about, Catherine Ivanovna.? Do you think you will always be able to go on like this ? One day you will get married, you will leave my service, and your husband, be sure, will not be like me. He will be much more particular. Think of your future, Catherine Ivanovna!’ That is all, and that is repeated day after day. Meanwhile the Empress goes briskly into her work-roo m, followed by her dogs, who have waited till now to leave their luxurious bed. It is time for dejeun er. The coffee is waiting: good. Is it strong enough .? It needs a pound of coffee for the five cups that the Empress is accustomed to take. One day one of her secre- taries, a certain Kozmine, coming to make his report, is benumbed with the cold. The Empress rings. ‘A cup of coffee for the poor shivering wretch ! ’ She insists on his swallowing the steaming cup at a draught. But what is the matter ? He is unwell ; he has palpitations of the heart. He has had the coffee that is pre- 374 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA pared for her Majesty, and which she alone can drink. It never occurred to any one that the cup was for the secretary ; who could imagine that her Majesty would share her ddjeimer with a mere tchinovnik like him ? Generally Catherine only shares her dejeuner with her dogs. The imperial coffee is not in their line ; but there is thick cream, biscuits, sugar. The whole con- tents of the sugar-basin go to them, and the biscuits too. Her Majesty has now no further need of any one. If her dogs want to go out, she opens the door for them herself. She wis hes to be alone, and to give herself entirely to her work or c nrjespondj &n^-~r(tt~nifle--m=^^ But where is her favourite snuff-box, which should always be on her work-table? A portrait of Peter the Great, which is on the cover, is there, she says, to /remind her that she has to continue the work of the Great Czar. Catherine takes a great deal of snuff. But she never carries a snuff-box. There must be one at hand in every corner of her palace. She uses only a particular kind of tobacco that is specially grown for her in her garden of Tzarskoie-Sielo. When writing, she needs to take snuff almost all the time. She rings. ‘Will you kindly,’ she says to a valet de chambre who enters, ‘look for my snuff-box.’ ‘Veuillez,’ ‘ Prenez la peine de,’ are formulas that she invariably uses in speaking to the people about her, however humble. At nine. precisely Catherine returns to her bedroom. It is there that she receives the officia ls who come to give in their report. The Refect of police enters first. Her Majesty is HOME LIFE 37