Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (53 page)

A Russian army of forty thousand veterans was already assembled in occupied Prussian Pomerania, and Peter, without waiting to arrive himself, ordered these troops to advance. The Danes reacted by moving first and met the Russians in Mecklenburg. Then, to the astonishment of Danish commanders, the Russians in front of them began to retreat.

The riddle was solved a few days later. There had been a coup d’état in St. Petersburg. Peter III had been overthrown, had abdicated, and was a prisoner. Peter’s wife, now styled Catherine II, had been proclaimed empress of Russia.

43
“Dura!”

N
O ONE KNOWS EXACTLY
when the plot to remove Peter III from the throne first took shape in Catherine’s mind. As Peter’s consort, she had become empress of Russia. Politically, however, this meant little; from the beginning of her husband’s reign, her position was one of isolation and humiliation. “
It does not appear that the empress is much consulted,” Ambassador Keith reported to London, adding that he and his fellow diplomats “think it not the likeliest way of succeeding to make any direct or particular address to her Imperial Majesty.”
Breteuil, the French ambassador, wrote, “
The empress is abandoned to grief and dark forebodings. Those who know her say she is scarcely recognizable.”

Her position was particularly delicate since she was pregnant. With her physical activity severely restricted, there was little she could do to lead, or even encourage, the overthrow of her husband. The more she examined her situation, the greater appeared the risks, and she concluded that her best course was to withdraw completely from court life, do nothing, and wait to see how Peter managed his role as emperor. Catherine never gave up her ambition; instead, she simply allowed it to be guided by patience.

As she had imagined might happen, Peter’s errors and the insults he heaped upon her made her more popular. On February 21, Peter’s birthday, Catherine was forced to pin the ribbon of the Order of St. Catherine on Elizabeth Vorontsova’s gown, an honor previously conferred only on empresses and grand duchesses. Everyone understood that this was intended as a public insult to Catherine, and it won her increased sympathy. Breteuil, the French ambassador, wrote, “The empress bears the emperor’s conduct and the arrogance of Vorontsova nobly.” A month later he reported that she was “putting a manly face on her troubles; she is as much loved and respected as the emperor is hated and despised.” One factor in Catherine’s favor was that the court and the foreign ambassadors all regarded the emperor’s choice of a mistress—now the presumed empress-to-be—as farcical. Breteuil described Elizabeth Vorontsova as “having the appearance and manners of a
pot-house wench.” Another observer described her “
broad, puffy, pock-marked face and fat, squat, shapeless figure.” A third reported that “she was ugly, common and stupid.” Everyone who tried to understand her appeal to the emperor failed.

In her secluded apartment, Catherine’s third child, Gregory Orlov’s son, was born in secrecy on April 11. Named Alexis Gregorovich (son of Gregory) and later titled Count Bobrinksy, the infant was swaddled in soft beaver skin and spirited out of the palace to be cared for by the wife of Vasily Shkurin, Catherine’s faithful valet. Shkurin himself was responsible for the ruse that ensured that the birth would not be noticed. Knowing that the emperor loved fires, Shkurin waited until Catherine’s contractions became severe and then set fire to his own house in the
city, trusting that Peter and many in the court would rush to watch the blaze. His guess was correct, the fire spread to other houses, and Catherine was left alone with a midwife to bear her child. She recovered quickly. Ten days later, in blooming health, she received dignitaries who came to pay their respects on her thirty-third birthday. Free of the pregnancy that had curtailed her ability to speak publicly and act, she told Count Mercy, the Austrian ambassador, that she heartily detested the new treaty her husband had made with their hated mutual enemy, Prussia.

Through May, tension mounted in St. Petersburg. Preparations for Peter’s Danish campaign went forward and some line regiments had moved to Narva, the first stage on the road to the battlefield. With every step in the direction of this unwanted war, resistance grew more intense. The Guards regiments, officers and men, tormented by increasing Prussian influence on their lives, were infuriated by the prospect of a distant, meaningless campaign against Denmark. Peter ignored their opposition.

The poisonous relationship between Peter and Catherine was made unmistakably clear at the end of April when Peter presided over a state banquet to celebrate the alliance with Prussia. Four hundred guests were in the hall. The emperor, wearing a blue Prussian uniform with the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle hanging from an orange ribbon around his neck, sat at the head of the table. The Prussian ambassador was on his right; Catherine was far away. Peter began by proposing three toasts. The first was to the health of the imperial family. The guests pushed back their chairs, rose, and drank. Catherine remained seated. As she put down her glass, Peter flushed with anger, sent his adjutant to ask why she had not risen to her feet. Catherine sent back word that, as the imperial family consisted only of her husband, her son, and herself, she did not think her husband would feel it necessary or appropriate for her to rise. The adjutant returned from Peter to say that the emperor said that she was a fool and ought to have known that the emperor’s two uncles, both princes of Holstein and both present, were also members of the imperial family. Then, fearing that his messenger might be softening his message, Peter stood and bawled a single word,
“
Dura!”
(“fool”). As this insult reverberated around the room, Catherine burst into tears. To recover,
she turned to Count Stroganov, sitting next to her, and asked him to tell a funny story.

Peter had made clear to everyone not only the contempt he felt for his wife but that he scarcely regarded Catherine as his wife any longer. That same night, reeling with drink, he ordered Catherine arrested and taken to the Schlüsselburg Fortess. This command was rescinded on the urgent plea of Catherine’s uncle, Prince George of Holstein, the new commander in chief of the Russian army.
^*
After becoming emperor, Peter had brought this Holstein cousin to Russia to command the army in the Danish campaign. In this capacity, George pointed out to Peter that the arrest of the empress would arouse violent indignation in the army. Peter backed away and canceled the order, but the episode was a warning to Catherine.
“It was then,” she wrote later to Poniatowski,
“that I began to listen to the proposals [to depose Peter] which people had been making to me to me since the death of the empress.” Of course, she had been listening long before.

The
“Dura!”
episode turned all eyes on Catherine. Outwardly, she bore this public humiliation with dignity and resignation. But this was a façade; Catherine had never willingly resigned herself to such treatment. It was obvious to her that Peter’s hostility had evolved into a determination to end their marriage and remove her from public life. She held positions of strength, however. She was the mother of the heir; her intelligence, competence, courage, and patriotism were widely known; and while Peter was piling blunder on top of blunder, her popularity was soaring. The moment to act was approaching.

On June 12, Peter left St. Petersburg for Oranienbaum to drill his fourteen hundred Holstein soldiers before sending them off to war. Rumors of restlessness in the capital reached him, but his only precautionary response was to order Catherine to leave the city. He instructed her to take herself not to Oranienbaum, where she had spent sixteen summers; (Oranienbaum was now the domain of Vorontsova, the empress-to-be) but to Peterhof, six miles away. Catherine traveled to Peterhof on June 17. As a precaution, she left Paul behind in the capital
with Panin. Meanwhile, the Orlov brothers, circulating among the Guards, speeded the flow of money and wine to the men in the barracks—all of these good things passed out in the name of the Empress Catherine.

Panin, the Orlovs, and Dashkova understood that the crisis was near. Panin’s support was firm. What rapport could there be between a feather-brained, garrulous monarch, pretending to be a soldier and affecting the language of the barracks, and a highly educated statesman, elegant, naturally reserved, of fastidious taste, who had spent half his life at courts, wearing a powdered wig and an elaborate, brocaded costume? There was more than a difference in style. Peter had spoken openly of sending Panin back to Sweden, where his task as Russian ambassador would be to work in the interests of Frederick and Prussia—in direct contradiction to Panin’s own political views. This cautious diplomat never intended to be a principal leader in a revolution, but Panin had now become not only the guardian of Catherine’s son and heir but also her chief ministerial counselor during this critical moment in her life. He was well qualified.

Another powerful figure had joined the empress. This was Count Kyril Razumovsky, who, twelve years before, had ridden forty miles every day to visit Catherine. Well educated and genial, a court figure whom everyone admired, he was chafing under the regime of Peter III. Razumovsky, grown plump, knew how absurd he looked in a tight-fitting Prussian uniform and that his clumsiness on the parade ground offended as well as amused the emperor. When Peter had boasted to him that King Frederick had made him a colonel in the Prussian army, Razumovsky caustically replied, “
Your Majesty can have your revenge by making him a field marshal in the Russian army.” Razumovsky had already cast his lot with Catherine and could help in many ways. Besides being hetman of the Cossacks, he was colonel of the Izmailovsky Guards Regiment and president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At a critical moment, Razumovsky told the director of the academy printing press to begin secretly printing copies of a manifesto, written by Panin and approved by Catherine, declaring that Peter III had abdicated and that Catherine had assumed the throne. Frightened, the director protested that this was premature and dangerous. Razumovsky fixed him with a stare. “
You already know too much,” he said. “Now your head, as well as mine, is at stake. Do as I say.”

Nothing, however, could be done without the Guards. By chance,
Gregory Orlov had been appointed paymaster of the Guards Artillery, giving him access to substantial funds, which he used to pay for the wine he distributed to the soldiers. By the end of June, he and his brothers had won the support of fifty officers, and, they believed, thousands of the rank and file. One of the most enthusiastic officers was a Captain Passek of the Preobrazhensky Guards.

Thus, while Peter at Oranienbaum was preparing his military campaign against Denmark, the conspirators were planning their coup against him. Their first idea had been to seize Peter in his room in the palace and declare him incompetent to rule, just as Empress Elizabeth had seized Ivan VI and his mother while they were asleep, twenty-one years earlier. The departure of Peter for Oranienbaum, where he would be surrounded by hundreds of loyal Holstein soldiers, had thwarted this plan. To replace it, they had agreed to Panin’s proposal that Peter be arrested when he returned to the capital to witness the departure of the Guards regiments for the Danish campaign. The Guards, still in the capital and primed by the Orlovs, would depose Peter and swear allegiance to Catherine.

On June 7, members of the emperor’s retinue were told to be ready to start within ten days. The Preobrazhensky Guards were ordered to prepare to leave for Germany on July 7. Foreign embassies were informed that when the emperor left to command his armies, he wished all foreign ambassadors to accompany him. But Mercy of Austria had already left for Vienna; Breteuil of France departed quickly for Paris; of the prominent diplomatic envoys in the capital, only Keith of England packed his trunks. The Russian naval squadron at Kronstadt was ordered to be ready to sail. Unfortunately, the admiral reported that many sailors were sick; Peter responded by issuing a decree commanding the sailors “to get well immediately.”