THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN
It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived wasin reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that thegreatest Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But theEmperor Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other insomething else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, madehimself so French in sympathy and understanding as to be able to playupon the imagination of all France as a great musician plays upon asplendid instrument, with absolute sureness of touch and an abilityto extract from it every one of its varied harmonies. So the EmpressCatharine of Russia--perhaps the greatest woman who ever ruled anation--though born of German parents, became Russian to the core andmade herself the embodiment of Russian feeling and Russian aspiration.
At the middle of the eighteenth century Russia was governed by theEmpress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. In her own time, and fora long while afterward, her real capacity was obscured by her apparentindolence, her fondness for display, and her seeming vacillation butnow a very high place is accorded her in the history of Russian rulers.She softened the brutality that had reigned supreme in Russia. Shepatronized the arts. Her armies twice defeated Frederick the Great andraided his capital, Berlin. Had Elizabeth lived, she would probably havecrushed him.
In her early years this imperial woman had been betrothed to Louis XV.of France, but the match was broken off. Subsequently she entered intoa morganatic marriage and bore a son who, of course, could not be herheir. In 1742, therefore, she looked about for a suitable successor, andchose her nephew, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp.
Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so splendid afuture, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress next soughtfor a girl who might marry the young prince and thus become thefuture Czarina. She thought first of Frederick the Great's sister; butFrederick shrank from this alliance, though it would have been of muchadvantage to him. He loved his sister--indeed, she was one of the fewpersons for whom he ever really cared. So he declined the offer andsuggested instead the young Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy ofAnhalt-Zerbst.
The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of thesemi-barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.
The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized,half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneerof French elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery andlust. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frederick the Great wasunwilling to have his sister plunged into such a life.
But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia ofAnhalt-Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young girlwillingly accepted, the more so as her mother practically commanded it.This mother of hers was a grim, harsh German woman who had reared herdaughter in the strictest fashion, depriving her of all pleasure with atruly puritanical severity. In the case of a different sort of girl thistraining would have crushed her spirit; but the Princess Sophia,though gentle and refined in manner, had a power of endurance which wastoughened and strengthened by the discipline she underwent.
And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was taken byher mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the Lutheran faith andwas received into the Greek Church, changing her name to Catharine. Soonafter, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter, andfrom that moment began a career which was to make her the most powerfulwoman in the world.
At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description ofCatharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; andher face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by thefact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair. Hercomplexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She hada certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself withsuch instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in factshe was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her figurewas slight and graceful; only in after years did she become stout.Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive, pure-minded Germanmaiden, with a character well disciplined, and possessing reserves ofpower which had not yet been drawn upon.
Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withholdhis sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case ofCatharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which musthave tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere boyin age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his vices.Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon insanity.Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial aunt, heoccupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.
Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, witha number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had beensoldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was hisdelight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats forvarious military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the dayor night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping ofthe curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by herhalf-idiot husband.
When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer andvodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and adebauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures couldbe heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathicperversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute andrepulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him withhorror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloatedface, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned noseand distended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She wasscarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize upon himand he would declare himself her slave, attending her at court functionsin the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotion for hisbride.
Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a longtime to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments shewould plead with him and strive to interest him in something betterthan his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was incorrigible.Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling, these neverlasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into the most franticexcesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.
It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good senseshowed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She thereforegradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of doingthose things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.
She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter theGreat none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried toforce upon the Russian people various forms of western civilizationwhich were alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had strivento make his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remainRussian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirredalways by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was theirown. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired theRussian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russiancostume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown ofgreen, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered withdiamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as weregifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor ofthe common people.
It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman,escaped the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. Theinfidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothingas his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of characterand of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which theaverage Russian ha
d no conception and therefore it is not strange thatCatharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned tosome of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the halfimbecile to whom she had been married.
Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should judgevery gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life whenceall the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several children beforeher thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubt exists asto their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were two whose courageand virility specially attracted her. The one with whom her name hasbeen most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and his brother, AlexisOrloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful in frame, suave inmanner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocity slumberingunderneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it was currentlydeclared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.
When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways hiselevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like thosewhich had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians havegiven him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with hisname; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about israther ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers, andhad remained for several days drinking and carousing until he scarcelyknew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named Gudovitch,who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into thebanquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with indignation.Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of a battletrumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.
"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those whoreally wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the gloriesof your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to takeas your model? It will not be long before your people's love will bechanged to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth.Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have given youso loyally!"
With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand twoproclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which hadbecome an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring tothe nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.
The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the brainof the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading them,hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that theyexpressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg, andgreat was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted onlyas any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger will thanhis.
As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another ofthe wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy ofhis aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything thatwas German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thus excitingthe jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German fashions. Heboasted that his father had been an officer in the Prussian army. Hiscrazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge ofsycophancy.
As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. Hedeclared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, wasreally fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turnedto Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possiblyforgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her highspirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; andat last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the CountessVorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.
It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for herpersonal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense.She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the groundof his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to makecomplaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad. If hequestioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take measures toimprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore she conferred withthe Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developedinto a conspiracy.
The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter'sHolstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened earlyone morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.
"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed!"
Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to thebarracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling outthe Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man theyclashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediatelyafterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son butas she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by thesoldiers, as empress in her own right.
It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. Thewretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance fromthe capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadtwould not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken toRopsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs, quiteof their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a corrosivepoison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and nowquite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seizedhim by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till theblood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate man wasdead.
Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice saveto accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the foreignambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic. Whenhis body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to haveoozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had beenplaced upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and some sixyears later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure. Thewhole incident was characteristically Russian.
It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign ofCatharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of herstatecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, andthe impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet thesethings ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the womanwhom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North." Because she wasso powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led in private alife which has been almost more exploited than her great imperialachievements. And yet, though she had lovers whose names have beencarefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood--which is tolove deeply and intensely only once.
One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl, andwhen repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to GregoryOrloff. She admired his strength, his daring, and his unscrupulousness.But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to seem almost morebrute than man. She could not turn to him for any of those delicateattentions which a woman loves so much, nor for that larger sympathywhich wins the heart as well as captivates the senses. A writer of thetime has said that Orloff would hasten with equal readiness from thearms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosed Finn or filthyCalmuck or to the lowest creature whom he might encounter in thestreets.
It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperialguards there came to her notice another man who--as he proved in atrifling and yet most significant manner--had those traits which Orlofflacked. Catharine had mounted, man--fashion, a cavalry horse, and, witha helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. Atthat moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her,observed that her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at herside. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helme
tand fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and thisslight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercisedover his imperial mistress!
When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched themwith lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then untilthe day of his death he was more to her than any other man had everbeen. With others she might flirt and might go even further thanflirtation but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence,to give advice, or to direct her policies.
To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased herfor the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another;but to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm.There was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knewher he was a man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after theirintimate acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles,while afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and inevery province of Greater Russia.
He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for merewealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise thewoman whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg,usually known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the mostsumptuous entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound withunusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drewforth a book she found to her surprise that its pages were Englishbank-notes. The pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, ofanother, notes on the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes some wereof solid gold, while others had pages of fine leather in which were setemeralds and rubies and diamonds and other gems. The story reads like abit of fiction from the Arabian Nights. Yet, after all, this was only asmall affair compared with other undertakings with which Potemkin soughtto please her.
Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empireby Potemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her newpossessions. A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore herdown the river Dnieper. The country through which she passed had beena year before an unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinaryefforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities whichhad been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population whichswarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. Itwas only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood andcanvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seemingto have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, andbeautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought onso great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.
Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailingsuccess to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He washandsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect whichmatched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on theother hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man,she could turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, hecould understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thingthat woman yearns for most--a kindred spirit that can understand withoutthe slightest need of explanation.
Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of this greatwoman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, heading armiesor ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted with evengreater fondness than before. And it was this rather than his victoriesover Turk and other oriental enemies that made Catharine trust himabsolutely.
When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy and ata time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death came uponhim after he had fought against it with singular tenacity of purpose.Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he had entertainedher in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as even Russia had neverknown before. Then he fell ill, though with high spirit he would notyield to illness. He ate rich meats and drank rich wines and borehimself as gallantly as ever. Yet all at once death came upon him whilehe was traveling in the south of Russia. His carriage was stopped, arug was spread beneath a tree by the roadside, and there he died, in thecountry which he had added to the realms of Russia.
The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the five yearsof life that still remained to her. The names of other men for whom shehad imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one man livedin her heart in death as he had done in life.
Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, acreature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton andhave gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palacekitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one findsthe chief interest of her story to lie in this--that besides beingempress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else,at heart a woman.