Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (25 page)

How could the tsarina fail to be impressed by such eager denunciations? After having listened to this concert of reproaches, Elizabeth made her decision.

One day in February 1759, while Bestuzhev was attending a ministerial briefing, he was accosted and arrested without explanation. During a searching of his residence, investigators discovered some letters from the grand duchess and Stanislaw Poniatowski. Nothing compromising, certainly; however, in this climate of obscure revenge, the pettiest evidence was sufficient for settling scores. Of course, in every country, anyone who meddles in high politics runs the risk of being cast down as quickly as he may have risen to the top. But, among the so-called civilized nations, the risks are limited to a reprimand, dismissal or early retirement; in Russia, the land of disproportion, culprits could be condemned to ruin, to exile, torture, even death. Catherine, as soon as she felt the chill air of repression tickling the nape of her neck, burned all her old letters, rough drafts, personal notes, and lists of accounts. She hoped that Bestuzhev had taken the same precautions.

In fact, while the Empress condemned her former chancellor, she also wished that he could get away with nothing more than a serious fright and the loss of some privileges. Was this excess of forgiveness due to her age and fatigue, or to the memories of a life of struggle and vice? She decided that this man, who had worked at her side for so long, merited a half-hearted punishment rather than a crushing conviction. Once more, she would be lauded as “the Lenient.” Her moderate action against Bestuzhev was all the more meritorious since the other members of the “Anglo-Prussian plot” appeared to have no excuse at all. She maintained a stony countenance when the Grand Duke Peter threw himself at her feet, swearing that he had had nothing to do with these political shenanigans and that Bestuzhev and Catherine alone were guilty of fraud and treason. Disgusted by the baseness of her nephew, Elizabeth sent him to his apartments, without a word. For her, Peter no longer counted. Or existed.

Her attitude was quite the opposite when it came to the “indescribable” conduct of her daughter-in-law. To clear herself, Catherine sent her a long letter, written in Russian; she confided that she was distraught, protested that she was innocent, and beseeched her to allow her to leave for Germany, to go back to her mother and to pray at her father’s graveside (he having recently passed away). The idea of voluntary exile for the grand duchess appeared so absurd and so inappropriate in the current circumstances that Elizabeth did not even reply. She chose to punish Catherine by depriving her of her best chambermaid, Miss Vladislavov. This new blow completely demolished the young woman. Consumed by sorrow and fear, she took to bed and refused any food, claiming to be sick in heart and body; on the verge of inanition, she adamantly refused to be examined by a doctor.

She begged the obliging Alexander Shuvalov to call a priest to hear her confession. Father Dubiansky, personal chaplain of the tsarina, was alerted. Having received the grand duchess’s confession and contrition, he promised to plead her cause with Her Majesty. In a visit to his Majestic penitent, the priest painted such a picture of her daughter-in-law’s pain (a daughter-in-law, after all, who could only be reproached for a maladroit devotion to the cause of the monarchy), that Elizabeth promised to reflect on the case of this strange parishioner. Catherine did not yet dare to expect a return to grace. However, Father Dubiansky must have been persuasive in his intervention for, on April 13, 1759, Alexander Shuvalov went to see Catherine in the room where she lay, wasting away in anguish, and announced to her that Her Majesty would receive her “this very day, at ten o’clock in the evening.”

Footnote

1. This was the beginning of the Seven Years War.

This meeting, as the empress and the grand duchess knew full well, would define their relationship forever. They each prepared carefully, marshaling all their arguments, objections, answers and excuses. Elizabeth was imbued with discretionary power, but she was mindful of the fact that her daughter-in-law was just thirty years old, her skin still smooth and her teeth still intact, giving her the advantage of youth and grace. It infuriated the tsarina to find herself over the age of fifty, fat, and able to attract men only by her title and her authority. Suddenly, the competition between two political characters became a competition between women. Catherine had the benefit of age; Elizabeth had the hierarchical advantage.

In order to mark clearly her superiority over the upstart, the tsarina decided to keep her waiting in the antechamber long enough to fray her nerves and weaken her ability to charm. The audience was set for 10:00 in the evening, on April 13; Elizabeth gave orders to introduce Her Highness into the salon only at 1:30 in the morning. Wishing to have witnesses to the lesson that she proposed to inflict on her daughter-in-law, she asked Alexander Shuvalov, her lover Ivan Shuvalov and even the Grand Duke Peter, the culprit’s husband, to hide behind large folding screens. She did not invite Alexis Razumovsky to this strange family event - he was still Her Majesty’s designated confidant, Her “sentimental memory,” but his star had faded recently and he had to yield place, in “significant ways,” to younger, more vigorous newcomers. Thus, “the Catherine-and-Peter issue” was outside his sphere of involvement.

This interview was critical, in Elizabeth’s view, and she arranged every detail with the meticulous care of a seasoned impresario. Just a few small candles shone in the half-light, accentuating the nerve-wracking character of the meeting. The empress deposited the exhibits in a gold dish: letters from the grand duchess, confiscated from Apraxin and Bestuzhev. Thus, from the first moment, the schemer would be thrown off balance.1

However, nothing went as the empress had planned. As soon as she stepped across the threshold, Catherine fell to her knees, wringing her hands and wailing in her sorrow. Between sobs, she claimed that no one in the court cared for her, nobody understood her, and her husband could do nothing but invent ways of humiliating her in public. She begged Her Majesty to allow her to leave for her home country. The tsarina reminded her that it is a mother’s duty to remain at the sides of her children, no matter what - to which Catherine retorted, still weeping and sighing: “My children are in your hands and could not receive better care than that!” Touched at a sensitive point by this recognition of her talents as a teacher and protectress, Elizabeth helped Catherine to her feet and gently reproached her for having forgotten all the marks of interest and even affection that she had once lavished upon her. “God is my witness, how I wept when you on your deathbed,” she said. “If I had not loved you, I would not have kept you here…But you are extremely proud! You think that nobody has a better mind than you!”

At these words, flouting the instructions he had been given, Peter stepped forward and interjected, “She is terribly spiteful and incredibly stubborn!”

“You must be speaking about yourself!” retorted Catherine.

“I have no problem telling you in front of Her Majesty that I really am malicious with you, who advise me to do things that are wrong, and that I certainly have become stubborn since I see that by being agreeable I only earn your spite!”

Before the discussion degenerated into an everyday domestic conflict, Elizabeth sought to regain control. Confronted by this teary woman, she had almost forgotten that the alleged victim of society was a faithless wife and a conspirator. Now, she went on the attack. Pointing to the letters in the gold dish, she said, “How dared you to send orders to Field Marshal Apraxin?”

“I simply asked him to follow your orders,” murmured Catherine.

“Bestuzhev says that there were many more!”

“If Bestuzhev says that, he lies!”

“Well, if he is lying, then I will have him put to torture!” exclaimed Elizabeth, giving her daughter-in-law a fatal glance.

But Catherine did not stumble; indeed, the first
passé d’armes
had boosted her confidence. And it was Elizabeth who suddenly felt ill at ease in this interrogation. To calm herself, she began to pace up and down the length of the room. Peter took advantage of the hiatus to launch out in an enumeration of his wife’s misdeeds.

Exasperated by the invectives from her little runt of a nephew, the tsarina was tempted to side with her daughter-in-law, whom she had just condemned a few minutes before. Her initial jealousy of the young and attractive creature gave way to a kind of female complicity, over the barrier of the generations. In a moment, she cut Peter short and told him to keep silent. Then, approaching Catherine, she whispered in her ear: “I still had many things to say to you, but I do not want to make things worse [with your husband] than they already are!”

“And I cannot tell you,” answered Catherine, “what an urgent desire I have to open to you my heart and my soul!”2 This time, it was the Empress whose eyes were filled with tears. She dismissed Catherine and the grand duke, and sat quietly a long time in front of Alexander Shuvalov, who in his turn came out from behind the folding screen. After a moment, she sent him to the grand duchess with a top secret commission: to urge her not to suffer any longer, pointlessly, for Her Majesty hoped to receive her soon for “a genuinely private conversation.”

This private conversation did, indeed, take place, in the greatest secrecy, and allowed the two women finally to explain themselves honestly. Did the empress demand, on that occasion, that Catherine provide full details on her liaisons with Sergei Saltykov and Stanislaw Poniatowski, on the exact parentage of Paul and Anna, on the unofficial household of Peter and the dreadful young Vorontsov, on Bestuzhev’s treason, Apraxin’s incompetence? In any event, Catherine found answers that alleviated Elizabeth’s anger, for the very next day she authorized her daughter-in-law to come to see her children in the imperial wing of the palace. During these wisely spaced visits, Catherine was able to observe how well-raised and well-educated were the cherubim, far from their parents.

With the help of these compromises, the grand duchess gave up her desperate plan to leave St. Petersburg to return to her family in Zerbst. Bestuzhev’s trial ended inconclusively, because of the lack of material evidence and the death of the principal witness, the Field Marshal Apraxin. Since, in spite of everything, some punishment must be given after so many abominable crimes had been announced, Alexis Bestuzhev was exiled - not to Siberia, but to his own lands, where he would not want for anything.

The principal winner at the end of this legal struggle was Mikhail Vorontsov, who was offered the title of chancellor, replacing the disgraced Bestuzhev. Behind his back, the duke of Choiseul, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in France, savored his personal success. He knew that Vorontsov’s Francophile tendencies would lead him quite naturally to win over Catherine, and probably even Elizabeth, to side with Louis XV.

With regard to Catherine, he was not mistaken: anything that went against the tastes of her husband seemed salutary to her; with Elizabeth, things were less clear. She sought savagely to keep her free will, to obey only her own instinct. Moreover, the early military successes bolstered her hopes. Showing more resolve than Apraxin, General Fermor seized Konigsberg, besieged Kustrin, and was making progress in Pomerania. However, he was stopped outside of Zorndorf, in a battle that was so indecisive that both camps proclaimed victory. Certainly, the French victory in Crefeld, on the Rhine, by the count of Clermont, briefly dampened the Empress’s optimism. But experience had taught her that this kind of risk is inevitable in war and that it would be disastrous for Russia to lay down its weapons at the first sign of failure. Suspecting her allies of being less adamant than she in their bellicose intentions, she even declared to the ambassador of Austria, Count Esterhazy, that she would fight until the end, even if she had to “sell all her diamonds and half her dresses.”

According to the reports that Elizabeth received from the theater of operations, this patriotic disposition was shared by all the soldiers, of high rank or low. In the palaces, on the other hand, opinions were less certain. It was considered proper, in some Russian circles associated with the embassies, to show a certain independence of mind in this respect; this was considered having a “European” outlook. The mindset promulgated in foreign capitals and bolstered by international alliances between great families encouraged an elegant and tolerant lifestyle straddling several borders, so that certain courtiers scoffed at those who only wished for a solution that would be fundamentally Russian. First among the partisans of Frederick II was, as always, the Grand Duke Peter, who no longer hid his cards. He claimed to be communicating to the king of Prussia (through the intermediary of England’s new ambassador to St. Petersburg, George Keith, who had succeeded Williams) everything that the tsarina was saying in her secret war councils. Elizabeth did not want to believe that her nephew was receiving money as a price for his treason; but she was informed that Keith had received from his minister, Pitt (who also idolized the king of Prussia), instructions to encourage the grand duke to use all his influence with the empress to spare Frederick II from disaster.

Once upon a time, the Germanophiles could also count on Catherine and Poniatowski to support them. But, after the openhearted conversation that she had had with her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth felt sure that she had definitively defeated her. Folding in on herself, retreating inward to simmer over her sentimental sorrows, the young woman now spent her time only weeping and dreaming. Since she had voluntarily removed herself from the game board, she had lost any importance on the international level. To ensure that she had been rendered harmless, Elizabeth dispatched Stanislaw Poniatowski on a foreign mission. Her Majesty then went one step further and, asking him to relinquish his passport, let him know that henceforth his presence in St. Petersburg would be deemed undesirable.