Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (27 page)

While the
generalissimo
, appointed
in extremis
, was certainly full of good intentions, he had neither the authority nor the military knowledge necessary to fill the role. However, nobody in Elizabeth’s inner circle warned her against the risks of such a choice. For one Ivan Shuvalov (who was always preaching all-out war), how many worthy advisers showed themselves strangely hesitant, inexplicably evasive!

Little by little, Elizabeth noted that even within the palace there were two irreconcilable political views, two groups of partisans who fought with arguments, tricks and intrigues. Some pushed for complete conquest for love of country; the others, tired of a war that was costly in terms of lives and money, wished to see it ended as soon as possible, even at the price of some concessions.

Torn between the two camps, Elizabeth was almost ready to give up her claims on Eastern Prussia provided that France supported her claims on Polish Ukraine. In St. Petersburg, in London, in Vienna, and in Versailles, the diplomats haggled endlessly. That was their pleasure and their trade. But Elizabeth was wary of their quibbles. Even as everyone around her was discussing her health, she intended to keep a tight grip on the destiny of her empire, as long as she had the strength to read her mail and say her prayers. At times, she regretted being an old woman and unable, in that condition, to command her regiments in person.

In reality, in spite of the shifting winds in war and politics, things were not going so badly for Russia. These disturbing events ruffled the surface of the water, but deeper down, a strong current was flowing right along, maintained by the usual paperpushing in the state offices, the harvests at the agricultural estates, the output of the factories, artisans’ workshops and public building sites, and the comings and goings of boats in the ports and caravans in the steppes, bringing their cargos of exotic goods.

This quiet agitation went on, like an anthill, in spite of the tumult at the top; and Elizabeth interpreted it as a sign of the extraordinary vitality of her people. Come what may, she thought, Russia is so vast, so rich in good land and courageous men that it can never perish. If one could cure it of its subservience to Prussian models, the game would be half-won already. For her part, she could take pride in having, in just a few years’ time, removed most of the Germans who had run the Administration. Whenever her advisers had suggested a foreigner for an important position, her invariable answer was, “Don’t we have a Russian to put there?”

This systematic preference quickly became known to her subjects and led to the arrival of new statesmen and military men, eager to devote themselves to the service of the empire.

While bringing new blood into the hierarchy of civil servants, the empress had also set about boosting the country’s economy by removing the internal customs system, instituting banks of credit like those in other European states, encouraging the colonization of the uncultivated plains of the southwest, creating the first secondary schools here and there, and founding the university in Moscow (to succeed the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy in that city) and the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Thus she maintained, against all the winds and tides, the trend of opening to the Western culture that Peter the Great had so urgently fostered, and without too much sacrificing the land’s traditions that were so cherished by the old nobility. While she recognized the defects of serfdom, she by no means planned to give up this secular practice. Let unrepentant utopians dream of a paradise where rich and poor,
muzhiks
and landowners, illiterate and erudite, blind and clear-sighted, young and old, minstrels and freaks would all have the same chance in life - she was too conscious of the harsh Russian reality to subscribe to such a mirage. On the other hand, whenever she found, within reach, an opportunity to extend the geographical limits of Russia, she became possessed, like a gambler at a betting table.

At the end of 1761, just when she was starting to doubt the abilities of her military chiefs, the fortress of Kolberg (in Pomerania) fell into the hands of the Russians. The attack was led by Rumiantsev, with a promising new general at his side - one Alexander Suvorov. This unhoped-for victory proved the empress right in holding out against the skeptics and the defeatists.

However, she hardly had the strength to enjoy the moment.

She had just spent a few weeks resting at Peterhof, but it had not brought her any relief. Returning to the capital, the satisfaction brought by her country’s military victory was soon effaced by the turmoil around her. She was haunted by the thought of death and caught up in rumors of dynastic intrigues, the grand duchess’s love scandals and the grand duke’s stupid, stubborn obsession with the triumph of Prussia. Shut up in her room, she suffered most of all from her legs, whose wounds bled in spite of every remedy. Moreover, she was becoming prone to hemorrhages and crises of hysteria, which left her dazed for hours. Now, she would receive her ministers sitting up in bed, her hair capped with a lace bonnet. Sometimes, to cheer herself up, she would call in the mimes from an Italian troupe that she had invited to St. Petersburg; she would watch their pranks and think back to the time when such buffoons us ed to make her laugh.

As soon as she felt a little more puckish, she asked to have some of her most beautiful dresses brought in and, after pondering a bit, chose one; at the risk of splitting the seams, she had her chambermaids dress her, entrusted her coiffure to the hairdresser with instructions to give her the latest Parisian fashion, and announced her intention to appear at the next court ball. Then, planted in front of a mirror, she lost heart at the sight of her wrinkles, her sagging eyelids, her triple chin and the blotches on her cheeks; she had herself undressed, went back to bed, and resigned herself to ending her life in solitude, lethargy and memories.

Greeting the rare courtiers who came to visit her, she read in their eyes a suspicious curiosity, the cold impatience of the lookout on a watchtower. They may have had an affectionate look on their faces, but they weren’t coming to wish her well - they wanted to see how long she had left to live. Only Alexis Razumovsky seemed to really care. But what was he thinking about, as he looked at her? Of the loving and demanding woman whom he had held so often in his arms, or of the corpse that he would soon be strewing with flowers?

To the disastrous obsession with death, Elizabeth soon added a fear of fire. The old Winter Palace where the tsarina had lived in St. Petersburg since the beginning of her reign was an immense wooden construction that, at the least spark, would go up like a torch. If fire broke out in some recess of her apartments, she would lose all her furniture, all her holy images, all her dresses.

And she would certainly not have time to escape, herself, but would perish in a blazing hell. Such disasters were, after all, frequent in the capital. She would have to summon up the courage to relocate. But to where? The construction of the new palace, which Elizabeth had entrusted to Rastrelli, was so far behind schedule that one could not hope to see an end to the work in less than two or three years. The Italian architect was asking for 380,000 rubles just to finish Her Majesty’s private apartments.

She did not have that kind of money, and she did not know where to find it. Maintaining the army was costing an arm and a leg.

Moreover, in June 1761, a fire had devastated the hemp and flax depots, destroying valuable goods that would have been sold to help replenish the State coffers.

To console herself for this penury and this typically Russian chaos, the tsarina went back to drinking great quantities of alcohol. When she had downed enough glasses, she would collapse in bed, sleeping like a beast. Her chambermaids watched over her while she rested; and she kept a special watchman, in addition - the
spalnik
, who was charged with checking her breathing, listening to her complaints and calming her fears whenever she began to wake up, between blackouts. To this good man, uneducated, naive and humble as a domestic animal, she no doubt entrusted the concerns that beset her as soon as she closed her eyes. All the family troubles simmered in her head together with the political intricacies, making an unpalatable stew. Chewing over old resentments and vain illusions, she hoped that at least death would hold off until she signed a final agreement with the king of France.

That Louis XV should have spurned her as a fiancée when she was only fourteen years old and he was fifteen, she could (if need be) understand. But that he should hesitate now to recognize her as a unique and faithful ally, when they were both at the height of their glory, surpassed understanding. That rogue, Frederick II, would not be such a cad!

It is true that the king of Prussia was counting on the grand duke to bring Russia back to its senses. Elizabeth would prefer to be damned by the Church than to accept such a humiliation! To prove that she was still in charge, on November 17 she took measures to reduce the very unpopular tax on salt and, in a belated burst of leniency, she published a list of prisoners condemned for life whom she suggested should be released. A short time later a hemorrhage, more violent than usual, curtailed all her activity.

With every coughing fit, she vomited blood. The doctors stayed by her bedside now and acknowledged that they had given up all hope.

On December 24, 1761, Elizabeth received extreme unction and summoned up the strength to repeat, after the priest, the words of the prayer for the dying. As she slid toward the great void, she guessed how pathetically agitated must be those, in this world that was receding from her little by little, who would have to carry her out to be buried. It was not she who was dying, but the universe of the others. Having failed to make a decision about her succession, she relied on God to settle Russia’s fate after she heaved her last sigh. Didn’t He know better than anyone down here what was appropriate for the Russian people? For a few more hours, the tsarina held off the night that was invading her brain. The following day, December 25 - the day Christ was born - at about 3:00 in the afternoon, she ceased breathing and a great calm spread across her, where traces of make-up still remained. She had just reached the age of 53.

When the double doors of the death chamber opened wide, all the courtiers assembled in the waiting room knelt down, crossed themselves and lowered their heads to hear the fateful announcement uttered by old prince Nikita Trubestkoy, Procurator General of the Senate: “Her Imperial Majesty Elizabeth Petrovna sleeps in the peace of the Lord,” adding the consecrated formula, “She has commanded to us to live long.” Lastly, in his powerful voice, doing away with any possible ambiguity, he said, “God keep our Very Gracious Sovereign, the Emperor Peter III.”

After the death of Elizabeth “the Lenient,” her associates piously inventoried her wardrobes and trunks. They found 15,000 dresses, some of which Her Majesty had never worn.

The first to bow down before the trimmed and made-up corpse were, as expected, her nephew Peter III (who found it difficult to disguise his joy) and her daughter-in-law Catherine (already preoccupied with how to play this new hand of cards).

The cadaver, embalmed, scented, hands crossed and head crowned, remained on exhibit for six weeks in a room in the Winter Palace. Among the crowd that filed past the open casket, many unknown individuals wept for Her Majesty who had so loved the ordinary people and who had not hesitated to punish the faults of the mighty. But the visitors irresistibly shifted their gaze from the impassive mask of the tsarina to the pale and serious face of the grand duchess, who knelt by the catafalque. Catherine seemed to have sunk into a never-ending prayer. Actually, while she may have been murmuring interminable prayers, she must in fact have been thinking about how to conduct herself in the future, to thwart the hostility of her husband.

The presentation of the late empress to the people, in the palace, was followed by the transfer of the remains to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. There again, during the religious ceremonies (which lasted ten days), Catherine astonished those in attendance by her demonstrations of grief and piety. Was she trying to prove how Russian she was, whereas her husband, the Grand Duke Peter, never missed an occasion to show that he was not? While the coffin was being solemnly transported from the Kazan Cathedral to that of the Peter and Paul Fortress, for burial in the crypt reserved for sovereigns of Russia, the new tsar scandalized the most enlightened minds by laughing and making faces behind the hearse. He must have been taking his revenge for all the past humiliations by thumbing his nose at the dead. But no one laughed at his high-jinks on a day of national mourning.

Covertly watching her husband, Catherine realized that he was contributing to his own undoing. Moreover, he very quickly announced the color of his intentions. The night following his accession, he gave the order for Russian troops immediately to evacuate the territories that they occupied in Prussia and Pomerania. At the same time, he offered to sign “an accord of eternal peace and friendship” with Frederick II, who had been conquered only yesterday. Blinded by his admiration for this prestigious enemy, he threatened to impose the Holstein uniform on the Russian imperial guard, to disband in a flourish of the quill certain regiments that he considered too devoted to the dear departed, and to make the Orthodox Church toe the line by obliging the priests to shave their beards and to wear frock coats like Protestant pastors.

His Germanophilia took such proportions that Catherine was afraid he would soon repudiate her and lock her up in a convent. However, her partisans told her repeatedly that she had all of Russia behind her - and that the imperial guard would not tolerate anyone touching a hair on her head. The five Orlov brothers, led by her lover Grigory, persuaded her that, far from despairing, she should be delighted by the turn of events. It was time to play all-out, they said. Didn’t Catherine I, Anna Ivanovna, and Elizabeth I all win the throne through coups of outrageous audacity? The first three empresses of Russia had shown her the way. Now, she only had follow in their footsteps.