Catherine The Great | history-profiles

Catherine The Great (1729 - 1796)

Born in November 1690, Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst had made a military career in the army of Frederick William I of Prussia. When peace came, the king gave him command of an infantry regiment garrisoning the port of Stettin, recently acquired from Sweden, on the Baltic coast of Pomerania. There, in 1727, Christian Augustus bowed to the pleas of his family and set himself to produce an heir. He married fifteen years old Johanna Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, whom he barely knew. When Johanna, of a good family with little money, reached adolescence and her parents, without consulting her, arranged a match to a man almost three times her age, she could only consent. Even more unpromising, the characters and temperaments of the two were almost entirely opposite. Christian Augustus was simple, honest, ponderous and reclusive, whilst Johanna was complicated, vivacious, extravagant. She was considered beautiful and with arched eyebrows, curly hair, charm and an exuberant eagerness to please, she attracted people easily.

Johanna's first disappointment came when she saw the house in Stettin to which her new husband brought her. She had spent her youth in unusually elegant surroundings. Because she was one of twelve children in a family that formed a minor branch of the ducal Holsteins, her father had passed her along for upbringing to the childless duchess, Elizabeth Sophie Marie of Brunswick-Luneberg. Here, in the most sumptuously magnificent court in north Germany, she had become accustomed to a life of beautiful clothes, sophisticated company, balls, operas, concerts, fireworks, hunting parties and constant, tittering gossip. Christian Augustus, a career officer existing on his meager army pay, could provide none of this. The best he could manage was a modest house on a cobbled street constantly swept by wind and rain. And here, Johanna was asked to exist on a tiny income with a puritanical husband who was devoted to soldiering, addicted to rigid economy and equipped to give orders but not to converse, eager to see his wife succeed in the enterprise for which he had married her: the bearing of an heir. And then, eighteen months after her marriage, she had a baby.

On 21 April 1729, in the chill atmosphere of a Baltic dawn, Johanna's first child was born. They managed to give the baby a name, Sophia Augusta Frederica, however, from the beginning, Johanna could not find or express any maternal feeling. She did not nurse or caress her daughter; she spent no time watching over her cradle or holding her; instead she handed the child over to servants and wet nurses. Eighteen months after this birth, Johanna bore the son upon whom she had set her heart. Her fondness for this second infant, Wilhelm Christian, became more intense when she realized that something about the child was seriously wrong. The boy, who appeared to suffer from rickets, became her obsession; she petted him, spoiled him and barely let him out of her sight, lavishing on him all the affection she had denied her daughter. Sophia, already keenly aware that her own birth had been a disappoinment to her mother, now observed the love with which Johanna surrounded her little brother.

Children of even minor nobility were provided with governesses, tutors and instructors in music, dancing, riding and religion to drill them in the protocol, manners and beliefs of the time. The influence of her governess, Elizabeth (Babet) Cardel, was critical at this time in Sophia's life. Babet, a Huguenot French woman who found Protestant Germany safer than Catholic France, was entrusted with Sophia's education. And the more independence young Sophia displayed, the more she worried her mother. Sophia was forbidden to speak unless spoken to or express opinions to adults; she was made to kneel and kiss the hem of the skirt of all visiting women of rank.

By birth, Johanna belonged to one of the great German families and she remained convinced that with her family rank, her cleverness, her charm and vivacity, she still might create a better place for herself. She began spending time cultivating her relatives by writing letters and by paying regular visits. Every February at carnival time, she visited Berlin to pay her respects to the king of Prussia. When Sophia was eight, Johanna began taking her along on these travels. Arranging a marriage was a duty Johanna meant to fulfill and it could do no harm, even at early stage, to let society know that an available princess was growing up in Stettin. As she grew older, Sophia was not only well aware of the purpose of their visits, she wholeheartedly approved. Despite her own wish to marry, Sophia's chances of an excellent match appeared only marginal.

Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst

(1690-1747),

son of Johann Ludwig I of Anhalt-Dornburg and Christine Eleonore of Zeutsch

Johanna Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp

(1712-1760),

daughter of Christian Augustus of Holstein-Gottorp and

Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach

In 1739, Johanna's brother, Adolph Frederick, was appointed guardian of the newly orphaned young duke of Holstein, eleven years old Karl Peter Ulrich. He was the only living grandson of Peter The Great and he stood first in line to become heir to the throne of Sweden. A year older than Sophia, he was also her second cousin on her mother's side. In reality, Karl Peter Ulrich was small, delicate and sickly, with protuberant eyes, no jaw and thin, blond hair falling to his shoulders. Emotionally as well as physically, he was underdeveloped. But Johanna, like every other mother of an eligible daughter, watched every movement he made and her heart soared when she saw her own ten years old Sophia talking to him. Sophia saw her mother and her aunts whispering. Even at her age, she knew that they were discussing the possibility of a match between herself and this strange boy.

Meanwhile, Sophia's appearance was improving. At thirteen, she was slender, her hair was a silky, dark chestnut, she had a high forehead, brilliant dark blue eyes and a curved rosebud mouth. Her pointed chin had become less prominent. Her other qualities had begun to attract attention; she was intelligent and had a ready wit. She was discovering the way to make people like her and once she learned the skill, she practiced it brilliantly. She realized that people preferred to talk rather than to listen and to talk about themselves rather than anything else. At fourteen, Sophia flirted briefly with her young uncle, her mother's brother, George Ludwig. Ten years older than Sophia and attracted by the fresh innocence of his blossoming niece, George Ludwig began to pay court, which ended with her uncle suddenly asking her to marry him. Dumbfounded and flattered, Sophia accepted her uncle's proposal, but before anything final could happen, a letter arrived from St Petersburg, informing that Elizabeth Petrovna had suddenly ascended the Russian throne and Johanna immediately wrote to congratulate the new empress.

Meanwhile, another series of events favorable to Johanna was taking place. In January 1742, Karl Peter Ulrich suddenly disappeared from Kiel and reappeared in St Petersburg, where he was adopted by his aunt Elizabeth Petrovna and proclaimed heir to the Russian throne. In 1743, there was another wonderful surprise for Johanna. As a condition of Peter becoming heir to the Russian throne, the Holstein prince renounced his claim to the crown of Sweden. By the terms of a treaty concluded between Russia and Sweden, Empress Elizabeth was permitted to designate her nephew's replacement as heir to the Swedish throne. She chose Johanna's brother, Adolph Frederick, who had been Peter's guardian.

Then, on 1 January 1744, after a service in the castle chapel, the family had just sat down to New Year's Day dinner when a courier brought a sealed letter for Johanna. It was from St Petersburg and had been written by the grand marshal of the court of Karl Peter Ulrich, now heir apparent to the Russian throne. He asked that Johanna travel incognito as far as Riga on the Russian frontier and that she keep her destination a secret. The letter did not specify the purpose of the summons, but a second letter, arriving only a few hours later, made it clear. This letter came from the new king - Frederick II of Prussia. After fifteen years of a depressing marriage, Johanna was to be a person of importance, a performer on the world stage, all the before wasted treasures of her personality were to be put to use.

In summer, the road from Berlin to St Petersburg was so primitive that most travelers chose to go by sea; in winter, no one used the road except diplomatic and postal couriers on urgent errands. Spurred by the empress' demand for the haste, Johanna had no choice. Although it was already January, no snow had fallen and sledges designed to glide across a surface could not be used. Instead, the travelers lumbered along day after day in heavy carriages, lurching and jolting over frozen ruts while freezing wind sweeping down from the Baltic whistled through cracks in the floor and sides. On 27 January, they reached Mitau and farther down the road they were met by Semen Kirilovich Naryshkin, a court chamberlain and the former Russian ambassador to London, who welcomed them officially in the name of the empress. On 29 January they left for St Petersburg and at noon on 3 February they reached the Winter Palace. Elizabeth was not there; she had gone ahead to Moscow two weeks earlier, but many of the courtiers remained behind and the empress had commanded that the visitors be given an imperial welcome.

While Sophia and her mother were being fitted with Russian wardrobes before proceeding to Moscow, Johanna had conversations with the two men in Russia whom Frederick II had assigned to guide her. One was his own ambassador, Baron Mardefeld and the other one was the French minister, Jacques-Joachim Trotti, Marquis de La Chetardie. The diplomats repeated that Chancellor Alexey Bestuzhev was fiercely opposed to the choice of Sophia as the bride of the heir. For this reason, they emphasized, Bestuzhev must be removed and they counted on Johanna's assistance. Meanwhile, to put herself on the most amiable possible terms with the empress, they urged that Johanna and her daughter hurry to Moscow in time to celebrate Peter's sixteenth birthday on 10 February.

In the days that followed, Grand Duke Peter repeatedly expressed his delight at having a relative his own age. Soon Sophia's polite interest in him encouraged him to speak freely, too freely. At the first opportunity, he told her that he was really in love with someone else, the daughter of a former lady-in-waiting of Elizabeth's. He still wanted to marry this girl but sadly her mother had recently been exiled to Siberia. If Sophia was wounded by his mindless insensitivity, she did not show this. She had learned to deal with absence of love in her own family and now she was prepared to deal with it in this new situation. For the moment, she adapted herself to Peter's ways and accepted her role as a friend and playmate. It did not take Sophia long to understand two underlying facts about her position in Russia: first, that it was Elizabeth, not Peter, whom she had to please; and second, that if she wanted to succeed in this new country, she must learn its language and practice its religious faith.

Adolph Frederick, Prince of Eutin (1710-1771),

Crown Prince of Sweden from 1743 and

King of Sweden from 1751

Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst

by Antoine Pesne (1745)

Within a week of her arrival in Moscow, her education began. A professor was provided to teach her to read and speak Russian and a scholarly priest was assigned to instruct her in the doctrines and liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. In contrast to Peter, who had bucked nad rebelled against everything his teachers tried to teach him, Sophia was eager to learn and flung herself into study of the Russin language. The day was too short for her and she begged that her lessons be prolonged. She began rising from bed at night, taking a book and a candle and walking barefoot on the cold stone floor, repeating and memorizing Russian words. Not surprisingly, this being Moscow in early March, she caught a cold. Sophia developed a fever, her teeth began to chatter, she was bathed in sweat and eventually she fainted. Johanna, alarmed that her daughter might be criticized as too susceptible to illness, tried to conceal it. However, words that Sophia's life was in danger reached Empress Elizabeth in retreat at the Troitsa Monastery, forty miles away. She rushed back to Moscow, hurried to Sophia's bedroom and, from that day on, for the four weeks that followed, Elizabeth nursed Sophia herself. The childless woman was filled with a kind of maternal love for this girl whom she scarcely knew and whom she thought she was about to lose. But by the first week in April, Sophia's fever had passed.

On 21 April, her fifteenth birthday, Sophia appeared at the court for the first time since her illness. To reward her for her courage and to celebrate her recovery, Elizabeth gave her a diamond necklace and pair of earrings. Grand Duke Peter sent her a watch encrusted with rubies. When she emerged that birthday evening, Sophia was perhaps not a picture of youthful beauty, but as she entered the reception rooms of the palace, she became aware that something had changed. In the look on every face, the warm pressure of every touched hand, she saw and felt the sympathy and respect she had won.

Meanwhile, Johanna had become the trusted confidant of Baron Mardefeld and Marquis de La Chetardie. There had been secret meetings, plans had been hatched and coded letters sent to Paris and Berlin. They never imagined that Bestuzhev knew about those meetings, that he was astute enough to have guessed their purpose, that he was expertly on guard. Bestuzhev's precautions were simple: he intercepted their letters, had them decoded, read them and then had them copied. Thus the innumerable letters passed between Moscow and Europe without either writer or recipient having the slightest suspicion that Chancellor Bestuzhev had read and recorded every word. However, he did not hurry and gave his enemies plenty of time to incriminate themselves. Not until he had collected about fifty of these letters, mostly from the pen of Marquis de La Chetardie, did he carry the evidence to the empress.

On 1 June 1744, Elizabeth took Peter, Sophia and Johanna with her on retreat to the Troitsa Monastery. Here, calculating that in the seclusion of this religious place the empress would have more time to read, Bestuzhev placed before her the evidence he had gathered. What Elizabeth saw, along with the effort to overthrow her chancellor, was that Johanna, while being overwhelmed with generosity and luxury, was scheming against Russian Empire in the interests of a foreign power. On 3 June Sophia, Peter and Johanna had just finished their dinner when the empress entered the room and commanded Johanna to follow her. Neither Peter nor Sophia could imagine what had happened. The both of them were still sitting there, bewildered and trembling, when the empress, her blue eyes flashing, her face crimson with rage, emerged from her apartment. Behind her came Johanna, her eyes red with tears. As the empress stood over them beneath the low ceiling, the children jumped down from their perch and bowed their heads in respect. This gesture seemed to disarm Elizabeth and impulsively she smiled and kissed them. Sophia understood that she was not being held responsible for whatever her mother had done. But there was no forgiveness for those who had insulted and betrayed the empress. She struck first at Marquis de La Chetardie. The French ambassador was ordered to leave Moscow within twenty-four hours, going directly to the frontier at Riga without passing through St Petersburg. Baron Mardefeld was allowed to linger, but also was sent home within a year. And Johanna was permitted to remain, but only until her daughter married the grand duke.

Thus Elizabeth, wishing to hurry events along, fixed the date of Sophia's betrothal to Peter for 29 June 1944. Accordingly, on the day just before, on 28 June, the young German princess was scheduled to formally and publicly disavow the Lutheran faith and be admitted into the Orthodox Church. On the day the empress reached for her hand and together they led a long procession to the crowded palace chapel. There, Sophia kneeled on a square cushion and the long ceremony began - Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst became Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeyevna. As she left the chapel, the new convert was presented with a diamond necklace and a brooch by the empress. Despite her gratitude, Catherine was so exhausted that, in order to save her strength for the morrow, she asked permission to be excused from the banquet following the ceremony. Later that night, she drove with the empress, the grand duke and her mother to the Kremlin, where her betrothal was to be celebrated the following day. The next morning the archbishop of Novgorod conducted the betrothal service and the rings, exchanged by the couple, were handed to them by the empress herself.

In November 1744, while the court was still in Moscow, Peter came down with measles and, since Catherine had never had the disease, all contact between them was forbidden. Toward the end of December, when Peter recovered, the empress decided that the court should leave Moscow and return to St Petersburg. Between the towns of Tver and Novgorod, Catherine and Peter's little procession halted for the night at the village of Khotilovo. In the evening, Peter began to shiver; then he fainted and was put to bed. The grand duke had developed a fever during the night and spots - symptoms of smallpox - had appeared on his face. As soon as Elizabeth was told, she ordered her sledge and raced back to Khotilovo. She was to remain at Peter's side for six weeks, rarely lying down, hardly changing her clothes.

Alexey Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin

(1693-1768),

Grand Chancellor of Russia

Elizabeth Petrovna (1709-1762),

daughter of Peter The Great and Catherine I;

Empress of Russia in 1740-1762

Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy (1704-1795),

his parents were Ivan Trubetskoy, a Russian Field Marshal, and his Swedish mistress, Baroness Wrede

Elizabeth had assigned Catherine a suite of four rooms in the Winter Palace; these rooms were separated from the rooms assigned to her mother. When Catherine told Johanna that the separation had been ordered and the rooms specifically assigned by the empress, who did not want Catherine to share her mother's quarters, Johanna's indignation mounted. She regarded this arrangement as a form of criticism of her conduct and of her influence on her daughter. Unable to direct her anger at Elizabeth, Johanna poured it out on Catherine. She picked constant quarrels and was on such bad terms with the courtiers that she no longer joined for meals but had them served in her own apartment. Catherine's separation from her mother and her careful avoidance of her mother's new friends meant that there were areas of Johanna's life of which her daughter had little knowledge. The nature and extent of the close relationship with Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy was one of these. Catherine was aware that her mother was fond of Betskoy and saw him constantly and that many people at the court, including the empress, believed that the relationship had become too intimate.

Early in February 1745, Peter was finally well enough to travel and the empress brought him back to St Petersburg. Catherine went to meet them in a reception hall of the Winter Palace. Until that moment, absence had softened Catherine's image of the man she was to marry. Peter had never been handsome, but he had possessed a certain nondescript blandness. The figure now standing before her was quite different. his face was practically unrecognizable. It was ravaged, swollen and pitted with still unhealed pockmarks. It was evident that he would be deeply scarred. His head had been shaved and the enormous wig he was wearing made him appear even more terrifying. Despite the poor light in the hall, Catherine was unable to mask her horror; summoning her courage, she stammered congratulations on his recovery and fled to her room. Peter was more affected emotionally and psychologically than Catherine by what smallpox had done to him. He was distressed to feel himself physically repulsive to his fiancee. Thereafter, he believed himself 'hideous' and therefore unlovable. In the spring and summer of 1745, Peter made elaborate excuses to remain in his own room, where he was surrounded and protected by his servants.

In March 1745, an ipmerial decree set the wedding for July. However, the vast extent and complexity of the wedding preparations had forced even an impatient Elizabeth to postpone the marriage ceremony, not once but twice. Finally it was set for 21 August. On the day Catherine was in her bath when the empress arrived unexpectedly to examine, unclothed, the virginal bearer of her own dynastic hopes. Then as Catherine was being dressed, the empress and the hairdresser discussed what coiffure would be best to hold the crown the bride was to wear. Because she was pale, a little rouge was added to her cheeks. Then a cloak of silver lace, so heavy that Catherine could scarcely move, was attached to her shoulders. Finally, the empress placed on her head the diamond crown. At noon, Peter arrived dressed in a suit of the same cloth of silver as Catherine's dress and train. He was smothered with jewels; his buttons, his sword hilt and his shoe buckles were encrusted with the diamonds. Then, holding hands as the empress instructed, the young couple left to be married.

In the end of the first day, preceded by a train of court officials and ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth escorted the seventeen years old husband and his wife to their nuptial chamber. However that night, Peter, reeking of alcohol and tobacco, fell asleep and slept through the night. In the nights that followed, Catherine continued to lie untouched at the side of her sleeping husband. Then, two weeks after their wedding, Peter finally had something to say to Catherine: with a broad smile, he announced that he had fallen in love with one of Empress Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting. Whether Peter's passion for her was genuine or whether he had merely concocted this story to explain to Catherine (and perhaps to himself) his lack of sexual interest to his wife, he was aware that he was subjecting her to insult and humiliation.

Grand Duchess Catherine after George Christoph Grooth

Grand Duke Peter after George Christoph Grooth

Empress Elizabeth needed an heir and she was perplexed, resentful and angry that still no child was on the way. By May 1746, eight months had passed since the marriage and there were no signs of a pregnancy. Bestuzhev also was quite concerned about the couple: he was alarmed by Peter's opinions and behavior and he mistrusted Catherine, whom he suspected of conspiring secretly with Frederick II. Because Peter openly admired the Prussian king, Bestuzhev could scarcely help fearing the accession of such a sovereign to the Russian throne. As the empress' first minister, he had to address her first concern: her need for an heir. Bestuzhev's approach was to recommend that a strong woman loyal to him be appointed as governess to Catherine, to watch the grand duchess and prevent any familiarity with the cavaliers, pages and servants of the court. The woman carefully selected by Bestuzhev was twenty-four years old Maria Semenovna Choglokova, Elizabeth's first cousin on her mother's side. She was one of the empress' favorites and both she and her husband were also devoted servants of the chancellor. Choglokova had a remarkable reputation for virtue and fertility. She idolized her husband and produced a child with annual regularity, an accomplishment meant to set an example for Catherine. However, she possessed none of the qualities necessary to assist an inexperienced young wife and she was neither wise nor sympathetic; on the contrary, she had a reputation as one of the most ignorant and arogant woman at the court.

In Zerbst, on 16 March 1747, Catherine's father suffered a second stroke and died. He had not been allowed to come to her betrothal or to her wedding and she had not seen him since leaving home three years before. Catherine's grief was profound and, shutting herself up in her apartment, she sobbed for a week. In that same spring, even as Catherine was mourning her father, her situation - and Peter's - became worse when Choglokova's husband was promoted to become Peter's governor. The decision had been made by Bestuzhev again. The chancellor, distrusting everyone who might come in contact with the couple, wanted another implacable watchdog. In the autumn of 1747, the Choglokovs imposed more restrictions. All of Peter's gentlemen-in-waiting were forbidden access to the grand duke's room and Peter was left alone with only a few lesser servants. As soon as it was noticed that he showed a preference for one of these, that person was removed.

Elizabeth had her own reason for isolating the young couple: she believed that if they were reduced to each other's company they would produce an heir. Now Peter spent most of the day with his wife. Sometimes he played his violin for her and Catherine listened, hiding her hatred of his 'noise'. Often, he talked about himself for hours. Sometimes, he was permitted to hold small evening parties at which he ordered their servants to wear masks and dance while he played the violin. However, bored by this shuffling, so different from the graceful movements at the great court balls she loved, Catherine, pleading a headache, lay on a couch, still wearing her mask, and closed her eyes. And then at night when they went to bed Peter would ask to bring his toys. When, as the months passed, Elizabeth found her hope still frustrated, she was determined to know which of the pair was responsible. The grand duke was not completely indifferent to women. Proof of this was his constant infatuation with one or another of the ladies of the court. He had some ideas of what he was supposed to do with Catherine in bed, however, her intelligence and charm, even her close female presence, aroused no initiative in him. Instead, they stimulated his sense of inadequacy, failure and humiliation. Since no one understood why Peter was ignoring his young wife, everyone, including the empress, laid the blame on Catherine.

On 15 December 1749, the court's year in Moscow came to an end and Catherine with Peter left for St Petersburg, traveling in an open sleigh. The transfer of the court to Moscow for a year left St Petersburg socially and culturally as well as politically deserted. They found the city practically empty and those who were there lonely and bored. And in this dreary setting, the Choglokovs invited Catherine and Peter every afternoon to play cards. They included Hedvig Elizabeth, Princess of Courland, the daughter of Ernst von Biron. On taking the throne, Elizabeth had recalled Biron from Siberia, where he had been exiled during the regency of Anna Leopoldovna. The empress did not want Biron completely reinstated and, rather than bring him back to St Petersburg or Moscow, had ordered him and his family to live in the city of Yaroslavl on the Volga.

Hedvig Elizabeth was twenty-five years old and she was not handsome - indeed, she was short and hunchbacked - but she had, according to Catherine, 'beautiful eyes, fine chestnut brown hair and great intelligence'. Her parents were not fond of her and Hedvig Elizabeth often complained that she was mistreated at home. Having made her way into the company of the young court and playing cards for hours every day with Peter and Catherine, the young princess conducted herself with discretion. In Peter's eyes, she had the additional merit of being German, she preferred speaking German and they spoke only that language together, excluding the people around them. This made her even more attractive to him and he began to pay her special attention. When she dined alone, he sent her wine from his table; when he acquired some new military hat or shoulder belt, he sent them for her to admire. Peter openly displayed his interest in Hedvig Elizabeth; he was never more than a step away from her.

In September 1751, the empress assigned three young noblemen as genltemen-in-waiting to Grand Duke Peter. One, Lev Naryshkin, came from the family that had produced Natalya Naryshkina, the mother of Peter The Great. Lev himself was an amiable, quick-witted wag whom everybody liked and no one took seriously; Catherine described him as someone who made her laugh more than anyone else in her life. The other two were the Saltykov brothers, sons of the oldest and noblest families in Russia. Peter, the older of the brothers, was a lout whom Catherine describes as 'a fool in every sense of the word'. The second Saltykov brother, Sergey, was handsome and ruthless; a man who was making the seduction of women his life's purpose. He was of dark complexion, with black eyes, of medium height and muscular yet graceful.

When Saltykov first met Catherine, he was twenty-six years old and had been married for two years to one of the empress' ladies-in-waiting. Now he was tired of his wife and ready for something new. He observed how blatantly the grand duchess was ignored by her husband and how obviously bored she was by the company around her. The fact that Catherine was closely guarded added allure; her marriage to the grand duke made the prize more glittering and the pervasive rumor that she was still a virgin made the challenge irresistible.

On one summer day in 1752, the Choglokovs invited Catherine, Peter and their young court to a hunting party on their island in the Neva River. On arriving, most of the party mounted horses and rode off after the dogs in pursuit of hares. Saltykov waited until the others were out of sight, rode up alongside Catherine and, without having to lower his voice, described the pleasures of a secret love affair. Soon after - sometime in August or September 1752 - he achieved his goal. No one knew of their affair, however, Peter made an accurate guess. More important, neither Empress Elizabeth nor the Choglokovs was aware of Catherine's new relationship. The three of them - Catherine, Peter and Saltykov - found themselves in a complicated situation. She loved a man who had sworn he loved her and who, thrusting aside seven years of virginal marriage, was teaching her about physical love. She had a husband who had not touched her, who still did not desire her, who was aware of her lover and thought it was all a titillating joke.

Catherine should have been happy, but something in Saltykov's attitude was changing. In the autumn, when the young court moved back to the Winter Palace, he seemed restless; his passion seemed to be waning. When Catherine reproached him, he emphasized the need for caution, explaining that she would understand the wisdom and prudence of his behavior. Peter and Catherine departed from St Petersburg in December 1752 and followed the empress to Moscow. Grand Duchess was already feeling signs of pregnancy. The sleigh traveled night and day and at the last relay station before Moscow, Catherine suffered violent contractions and heavy bleeding. Soon after, Saltykov arrived in Moscow, however his attitude remained distant. Nevertheless, he repeated the reasons for his behavior: the need to be discreet and avoid arousing suspicion. Reassured and hoping to please, Catherine agreed to a political proposal from Saltykov. He asked that she reach out on his behalf and request Bestuzhev to help him advance his career. It was not easy for Catherine to agree. For seven years, she had considered the chancellor her most powerful enemy in Russia. Now, influenced by her love for Saltykov and frightened by her fear of losing him, she put these considerations aside and did what he asked.

Despite the humiliations the chancellor had heaped on her and her family, the grand duchess recognized Bestuzhev's intelligence and administrative skill. From his perspective, her offer of reconciliation came at unusually opportune time. The rise of Elizabeth's new favorite, Ivan Shuvalov, was undermining the chancellor's position. He was intelligent, ambitious and he was actively securing influential positions in the government for his uncles and cousins. In addition, Bestuzhev worried about Elizabeth's health. Her illness had become more frequent and required ever-lenghtening periods of recovery. The chancellor had long realized that the grand duchess was far more intelligent than her husband and that she was as sympathetic to Russian interests as Peter was indifferent or hostile.

In May 1753, Catherine was pregnant again. She spent several weeks at a country estate near Moscow, where she restricted herself to walks and gentle carriage rides. On 28 June, she felt pain in her lower back and the following night Catherine miscarried. However, by February 1754, she was pregnant for the third time and, after a difficult labor, on 20 September she gave birth to a son.

The empress, who had waited so long, was exultant. As soon as the infant had been bathed and swaddled, she called in her confessor, who gave the baby a name - Paul. Then Elizabeth departed, commanding the midwife to pick up the new baby and follow. Peter also walked out of the room and Catherine was left lying on the floor. She did not see the baby for almost a week and she could get news of him only furtively because to ask about him would have been interpreted as doubting the empress' ability to care for him. The infant had been installed in Elizabeth's bedroom and whenever he cried she rushed to him herself. On the seventeenth day after the delivery, Catherine learned that Empress Elizabeth had assigned Saltykov to a diplomatic mission: he was to deliver the formal announcement of her son's birth to the royal court of Sweden. When he departed, Saltykov was leaving Catherine's private life forever. Their affair had lasted three years and had caused her much anguish.

From the moment of Paul's birth, the empress behaved as if the child were her own and Catherine had been simply a vehicle for bringing him into the world. She was not allowed to care for her infant; indeed, she was scarcely allowed to see him. She missed his first smile and his early growth and development. Catherine remained the entire winter of 1754-1755 in the narrow, little room with its ill-fitted windows through which freezing drafts blew in from the ice-bound Neva River. She made her public reappearance on 10 February at a grand ball in honor of Peter's birthday, who continued his relationships with other women and even contined to describe them to Catherine. However, she remained useful to him, helping him with duties he found complicated or burdensome. Peter, as the heir to the throne, still offered her the likelihood that, when he became emperor, she would become empress.

At the end of June in 1755, Catherine was hosting at a supper and ball in the gardens of the Oranienbaum estate. Among those stepping down from a long line of arriving carriages was the newly appointed English ambassador, Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams. Before the supper Sir Charles had introduced Catherine to a young Polish nobleman, Stanislaw Poniatowski, who had come to Russia to act as his secretary. At the supper, Catherine's eyes strayed to this second visitor, whose elegance and grace made him stand out among the dancers.

Grand Duke Peter and Grand Duchess Catherine, after George Christoph Grooth, around 1745

Grand Duke Peter and Grand Duchess Catherine, by George Christoph Grooth, around 1745

Sergey Vasilyevich Saltykov (1726-1765),

a Russian officer (chamberlain),

who became the lover of Gran Duchess Catherine in 1751-1754

Grand Duchess Catherine,

after Louis Caravaque

Pavel Petrovich (1754-1801),

son of Peter III and Catherine The Great

Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams (1708-1759),

a Welsh diplomat, writer and satirist

Stanislaw Poniatowski (1732-1798),

became the lover of Grand Duckess Catherine in 1755-1758

On the journey from Oranienbaum later that night, Poniatowski had no difficulty drawing the ambassador into a long, enthusiastic discussion about the grand duchess and the two men, one forty-seven, the other twenty-three, passed flattering impressions back and forth. Thus that summer night was the beginning of a personal and political relationship among them. Catherine found Sir Charles stimulating and sophisticated; when she learned he had come to negotiate the alliance between Russia and England aimed at Prussia, her admiration increased. For his part, Sir Charles knew Catherine to be a friend of Bestuzhev and therefore a potentially valuable ally. And when he offered financial assistance, using funds from the Brittish treasury, Grand Duchess accepted. She knew accepting money from the ambassador entailed risks, but she also knew that this game was played by everyone at the Russian court. Money brought friendships, loyalties and treaties. Everyone in St Petersburg was corruptible, including the empress herself.

Poniatowski's mother was Konstancja Czartoryska, a noble daughter of one of Poland's great families. She had married a Poniatowski and Stanislaw was her youngest son. The young man was adored by his mother and patronized by her brothers, two of the most powerful men in Poland. Politically, the family hoped, with Russian support, to end the rule of the elected king and establish a native Polish dynasty. Poniatowski could not compete in male beauty with Saltykov. He was short, he had prominent eyebrows and a tapering chin, but he spoke six languages and his charm and conversation made him welcome everywhere. He had other qualities appealing to a woman who had been rejected and discarded. His devotion showed her that she could inspire more than simple lust. He expressed admiration not merely for her title and beauty but also for her mind and temperament, which both he and she recognized as superior to his own. Poniatowski taught Catherine to know contentment and security as well as passion in love and he became a part of her process of healing.

At the beginning of this love affair, Catherine had three allies, which one was Sir Charles and the others were Bestuzhev and Lev Naryshkin. The chancellor made clear that he was willing to befriend Poniatowski on Catherine's behalf and Lev quickly stepped into the same role of friend and guide for the new favorite that he had performed during Catherine's affair with Saltykov. Several months were to pass before the unpracticed young man gathered sufficient courage to act. Even then, but for the persistence of his new friend Lev, the reluctant suitor might have been content to worship from a distance. However, eventually Lev deliberately placed Poniatowski in a situation from which the Pole could not retreat without risking the embarrasment to the grand duchess. Unaware of what had been arranged, he was led to the door to her private apartment. The door was ajar and Catherine was waiting inside. The grand duchess knew what needed to be done and, once his hesitation was overcome, she guided the handsome, virginal Pole into manhood.

Now officially recognized as Paul's father, Peter delighted in playing the untethered male. Singers and dancers, considered by the society te be 'loose women', appeared at his private suppers. The woman in whom he showed the most interest was one of Catherine's maids of honor, Elizabeth Romanovna Vorontsova, a niece of Mikhail Vorontsov. Her father, Roman Vorontsov, governed the provinces of Vladimir, Penza, Tambov and Kostroma, where his name became a byword for graft and inefficiency. Placed in Catherine's entourage at the age of eleven, she was neither particularly intelligent nor pretty. Slightly hunchbacked, with a face scarred by smallpox, she had a fiery temperament and was always ready to laugh, drink, sing and shout. Peter's attachment to her may have grown out of his own sense of inferiority; he may have concluded that she loved him for himself. Elizabeth Vorontsova had rivals and occasionally quarreled with Peter, but it was always to Elizabeth that he returned.

In the spring of 1757, Catherine realized that she was pregnant and by the end of September, she stopped appearing in public. At midnight on 9 December 1757, Catherine began having contractions, however her labor pains began to subside. She lay back and slept until morning. She awoke feeling occasional contractions but was free of them for most of the day. In the evening, she was hungry and ordered supper. Rising from the table, Catherine was seized by sharp pains. Peter and the empress were just entering the room when she gave birth to a daugther. Elizabeth declared that the infant should be named Anna, after her own older sister, Anna Petrovna. The baby was taken away to the nursery in the empress' apartment, where her three years old brother awaited her. Six weeks after the birth, the churching ceremony for Catherine's new daughter was held in the small palace chapel. But little Anna's ceremony was sadly different from the one celebrated for her long-awaited brother, Paul. Indeed, no one appeared to care much about this daughter, who, frail from birth, survived only fifteen months. Due to the court intrigue, in July 1758 Poniatowski had to leave St Petersburg.

As Empress Elizabeth's health deteriorated, Catherine now considered her own political future. It seemed certain that Elizabeth would make no change in the succession and that Peter would follow his aunt on the throne. With the grand duke's incompetence clear, Catherine could not help pondering what political role she might play in a new reign. If Peter acted on his determination to marry Elizabeth Vorontsova, Catherine would have no role. If, somehow, Peter were to be replaced in the line of succession and Paul were to come to the throne, she might act as a regent until the boy grew up. Which path would be open to her was unclear, but one thing was certain: whatever happened, she would need allies. And now she was attracting new adherents and, eventually, a significant trio of dissimilar people gathered around her.

The eldest of these three was the diplomat, forty-two years old Nikita Ivanovich Panin. He was Bestuzhev's protege and had survived his fall by having been absent from Russia when it occurred. At twenty-nine, he had been appointed Russian envoy to Denmark by Bestuzhev. A few years later, Panin was transferred to Sweden, where, for twelve years, he had served as ambassador. When Chancellor Bestuzhev fell and the Shuvalovs and Vorontsov forged their alliance with France, Panin resisted their demand that he support this new alignment. He resigned and, in the summer of 1760, came back to St Petersburg. Elizabeth, recognizing his ability, shielded him from the Shuvalov-Vorontsov faction and appointed him chamberlain and chief tutor to her beloved Paul, placing him in a politically sheltered post that gave him prestige at the court. Panin, believing that Peter was unfit to rule and should somehow be removed, wished Paul to be placed on the throne as a boy emperor with Catherine as a regent. He knew that Catherine was discreet and that it was safe to discuss his ideas with her. They had worked out no plan of action - there were too many unknown - but there was a bond of understaning.

The second of Catherine's allies was a hero of the war against Prussia, Gregory Gregoryevich Orlov. His grandfather had been a common soldier in the Streltsy founded by Tsar Ivan The Terrible that had revolted against the military reforms imposed by the young Peter The Great. In punishment, Peter had sentenced many of the Streltsy - this Orlov among them - to death. When it came his turn to lay his head on the block in Red Square, Orlov strode unhesitatingly across a platform covered with gore and, using his foot to push aside the freshly severed head of a comrade, declared 'I must make room here for myself'. Peter, impressed by this contempt for death, pardoned him and placed him in one of his regiments being formed for Russia's coming war with Sweden. Orlov became an officer and his son rose to be a lieutenant colonel and then begat five sons - Ivan, Gregory, Alexis, Fedor and Vladimir. All five were officers in the Imperial Guard; all were popular with brother officers and idolized by their soldiers.

Nikita Ivanovich Panin (1718-1783),

a Russian statesman and political tutor to Empress Catherine

Gregory Gregoryevich Orlov (1734-1783),

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1761-1772

All of the brothers possessed exceptional physical strength, courage, devotion to the army and to Russia. They were drinkers, gamblers and lovers, equally reckless in war and in tavern brawls. Alexis, the third of the five brothers, was the most intelligent. But it was Gregory, who was the war hero. One of his conquests followed the Batlle of Zorndorf, when, still recovering from wounds, he seduced Elena Kurakina, the mistress of Peter Shuvalov, Grand Master of the Artillery. He was introduced to the empress and eventually he caught they eye of the wife of the heir to the throne.There are no records describing the circumstances of Catherine and Gregory's first meeting. An oft-told story is that one day the grand duchess was staring out of a palace window when she saw a handsome officer in the uniform of the Guards standing in the courtyard. He happened to look up, their eyes met amd the attraction was immediate. In the summer of 1761, Catherine and Gregory Orlov became lovers. The affair was conducted in secrecy; the empress, Peter and Catherine's friends were not aware of it and the couple's dates took place in a house on Vassilevsky Island in the Neva River. And, in August 1761, Catherine felt pregnant.

Catherine had won the support of Nikita Panin and, with the help of the Orlov brothers, she was winning the sympathy of the Guards. And then she attracted a third recruit to her cause. This was Catherine Romanovna Dashkova, who, oddly enough, was the sister of Elizabeth Vorontsova, Peter's mistress. Grand Duchess met this unusual young person in 1758, when Dashkova was fifteen. Catherine, delighted to find a Russian girl who spoke only French and who cherished Enlightenment philosophers, went out of her way to be gracious; the younger woman made Catherine her idol. In February 1760, sixteen years old Catherine Vorontsova married Mikhail Ivanovich Dashkov, a tall, popular and wealthy young officer of the Guards. She followed her husband when he was assigned to Moscow and there she had two children within eleven months. In the summer of 1761, her family moved back to St Petersburg and her relationship with Catherine resumed. Dashkova's sister and Peter tried to draw her into their circle, but the two sisters differed in almost every way. Whether or not Elizabeth ever became a crowned empress, Dashkova considered her to be living in vulgar public concubinage.

On Christmas Day, 25 December 1761, Empress Elizabeth died. That evening, Peter presided over a supper for 150 people who had been instructed to dress in light colors to celebrate the new emperor's accession rather than the usual black customary for mourning. Ivan Shuvaov, the dead empress' favorite, in tears at her bedside, now stood behind Peter's chair, laughing and joking. Through the weeks of public mourning, Peter acted out his joy at being released from eighteen years of political and cultural imprisonment. Intoxicated by his new freedom, he resisted conforming to the customs of the Orthodox Church regarding death. On the few occasions he appeared in the cathedral, pacing restlessly, making jokes, laughing, pointing and even sticking out his tongue at the priests. Most of the time, Peter remained in his own apartment, drinking and shouting with an excitement he seemed unable to control.

Despite this inappropriate behavior, the new emperor followed a moderate political path in the early weeks of his reign. Mikhail Vorontsov, restored to the chancellorship after Alexey Bestuzhev's fall, retained the post and sided with the Shuvalovs. Ernst von Biron, Empress Anna's chancellor and lover and the father of Hedvig Elizabeth, was permitted to exchange his retirement in Yaroslavl for a residence in St Petersburg. Nothing was done, however, to ameliorate the disgrace of Alexey Bestuzhev, who had always supported Austria and opposed Prussia. A stream of popular administrative changes followed these amnesties.

On 17 January 1762, Peter pleased the entire population by reducing the government tax on salt. On 16 February, a decree secularized all church property, placing it in the hands of a new government. All dignitaries of the Orthodox Church were to become salaried officials paid by the state. When the higher clergy expressed indignation and dismay, Peter announced that the veneration of icons was a primitive practice that must be eliminated. All icons except those of Jesus Christ - all of the painted and carved renditions of the saints who were a part of Russian history - were to be removed from churches. Then, striking directly at the Russian clergy themselves, he demanded that priests shave off their beards and abandon the long brocaded robes that reached to the floor; in the future, he said, they must wear black cassocks like Protestant pastors. On 21 February, Peter abolished the Secret Chancellery, the dreaded investigative chamber that dealt with those accused of treason or sedition.

From his first days on the throne, the new emperor managed to offend the institution that he most needed for support. He was determined to reorganize the Russian army on the Prussian model. Everything was to be reformed or replaced: uniforms, discipline, battlefield tactics, even its commander - all were to be Prussianized. Peter took away the long, loose coats of Russian soldiers, useful in the cold of a northern winter, and put them into tight-fitting blue German uniforms. Peter himself began wearing the blue uniform of a Prussian colonel. At the beginning of his reign, he was content to wear the broad blue ribbon of the Russian Order of St Andrew; then he swithced to the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle.

When Frederick II of Prussia sent to St Petersburg a draft treaty for an eternal peace between Prussia and Russia, it did not go through the normal channel; it was not submitted or even shown to Chancellor Vorontsov. Instead, the Prussian ambassador simply read the text to the emperor in private without witnesses and on 21 April, he signed it without comment, sending it to the chancellor for confirmation. By this stroke of a pen on a secret treaty, Peter not only restored to Prussia all the territory won from her by Russia during five years of war but contracted an 'eternal' alliance with Prussia. With Russia defecting from the alliance and switching sides, France and Austria had no alternative except to negotiate with Prussia.

In her secluded apartment, Catherine's third child, Gregory Orlov's son, was born in secrecy on 11 April 1762. Named Alexis Gregoryevich and later titled Count Bobrinsky, 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. Free of this pregnancy that had curtailed her ability to speak publicly and act, she told the Austrian ambassador, that she heartily detested the new treaty her husband had made with their hated mutual enemy, Prussia.

On 12 June 1762, Peter left St Petersburg for Oranienbaum to drill his Holstein soldiers before sending them of to war to Denmark. 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, which was now the domain of Vorontsova, the empress-to-be, but to Peterhof, six miles away. Catherine traveled there on 17 June and, as a precaution, 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 Empress Catherine.

Panin, the Orlovs and Dashkova now understood that the crisis was near. 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 II - in direct contradiction to Panin's own political views. At this time another powerful figure had joined the empress. This was Kyril Razumovsky, who 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 the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At a critical moment, Razumovsky ordered 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.

In Juy 1762, to a gathering of larger crowd of soldiers, the empress said that her life and that of her son had been threatened by the emperor, but that it was not for her own sake, but for that of her beloved country and their Orthodox religion that she was compelled to throw herself on their protection. Flanked by the Orlov brothers and Kyril Razumovsky, Catherine stood before the iconostasis (icon screen) while the archbishop of Novgorod solemnly proclaimed her Empress Catherine II and her son, Paul Petrovich, the heir to the throne.

Catherine Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova (1744-1810),

a younger sister of Elizabeth Vorontsova,

Grand Duke Peter's mistress

Coronation portrait of Emperor Peter III,

in 1761

Grand Duchess Catherine

by Aleksey Antropov (1761)

By early evening Catherine was in a commanding position in the capital. She was sure of the Guards, the Senate, the Holy Synod and the crowds in the street. To confirm her victory, now she must locate Peter and persuade him to abdicate, the Holsteiners must be disarmed and the fleet and all Russian soldiers near the capital must be persuaded to join her. They key to success was Peter himself; he remained free and had neither abdicated nor been deposed. If he made his way to Germany, calling on Frederick II of Prussia to support him, a civil war was inevitable. Accordingly, he must be found, seized and forced to accept what had happened. Therefore, Catherine mounted a white stallion, placed herself at the head of the Guards and led them to Oranienbaum. Hearing this, Peter wrote a letter, offering to abdicate if he could take Elizabeth Vorontsova with him to Holstein. He signed an abdication written in the most abject terms.

Riding ahead of Catherine's advancing army, a group of horsemen led by Alexis Orlov galloped into Oranienbaum. The former emperor was led up a stairway to a little room in the palace, where he surrendered his sword and the blue ribbon of the Order of St Andrew. He was permitted to choose a palace of temporary confinement and he selected Ropsha, a lonely but pleasant summer house and estate, fourteen miles away. Alexis Orlov, responsible for the prisoner now, lodged him in a small room containing little more than a bed. Peter, shut up inside, was not permitted to walk in the park or to take the air on the terrace outside. Catherine and her advisers were still uncertain what to do with the former emperor. There is no evidence that Catherine ever concluded that Peter's death was necessary to her own political - and perhaps physical - survival. She was determined to take no risks and her friends were aware of this determination. She was, on the other hand, too prudent to hint at the desirability of an unnatural death. It is possible, that the Orlovs had already guessed her inner thoughts and persuaded themselves that, as long as their mistress was not admitted into their confidence or given any knowledge of their plans, they might safely rid her of this danger. Certainly, Gregory Orlov was hoping to marry his imperial mistress and Peter stood in his way.

On 6 July 1762, Alexis Orlov and other guards invited the prisoner to join them for the dinner. During the meal, everyone drank heavily. Then, because they had planned it or because there was quarreling that soared out of control, they pinioned the former emperor, wrapped a scarf around his neck and strangled him. Whether Peter's violent death was accidental, the result of a drunken scuffle that got out of control, or a deliberate, premediated murder will never be known. Whatever happened, Catherine had to deal with the aftermath. Her husband was dead in the custody of her friends and supporters. Her decision, possibly made on Panin's recommendation, was to treat the death as a medical tragedy. He also advised that the body be exhibited in as nearly normal a fashion as could be managed; he believed it wiser to display a dead Peter than to risk fostering the belief that he was still alive, hidden away somewhere and might reappear. On 23 July 1762, Peter's remains were placed in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery alongside the body of Regent Anna Leopoldovna, mother of the imprisoned Ivan VI. Catherine, however much she might pretend to ignore foreign comment and gossip, was never at ease about Europe's reaction to her husband's death.

Catherine now showered those who had put her on the throne with promotions, decorations, money and property. Her valet, Vasily Shkurin, who had burned down his house to distract Peter during the birth of Catherine's child Alexis Gregoryevich and then had taken the infant into his family to care for him, was raised to the nobility. Nor did the empress forget those earlier friends and allies whom Empress Elizabeth in her final reign years had removed from power and exiled. On the day after her accession, the new empress sent a messenger to Alexey Bestuzhev, who had been the first to imagine her on the throne and who, during interrogation and four years of banishment, had remained silent for her sake. He was summoned back to St Petersburg, met by Gregory Orlov twenty miles outside the capital and rode in the imperial coach to the Summer Palace, where Catherine embraced him and announced the restoration of all his titles. On 1 August 1762, she issued a special manifesto proclaiming his innocence of all the charges levied against him in 1758 and named him the member of the new imperial council she intended to form.

Catherine was magnanimous to her former opponents, never retaliating against supporters of her former husband or other adversaries, personal or official. Elizabeth Vorontsova, who urged that Catherine be sent to a convent so that she might become Peter's wife and the future empress, was sent to Moscow, where the empress bought her a house. She married an army colonel of humble background and quickly produced a child. Elizabeth Vorontsova spent the rest of her days in bitterness and ill health, while her brothers made spectacular careers in the diplomatic service. Knowing that she needed the assistance of every person of administrative ability and experience, Catherine drew around her a number of men who had sided with her hsuband. Mikhail Vorontsov was retained in his position as Chancellor; Alexander Golitsyn remained Vice-Chancellor and Nikita Trubetskoy kept his post as President of the College of War. As Catherine was winning allegiance and service from the former opponents, she was having difficulty pleasing some of her friends. Each believed that the recognition and reward he or she received was insufficient compared to what others had been given. And the most dissatisfied was Catherine Dashkova, who had assumed that she was about to become the new empress' principal adviser, riding in the imperial coach, enjoying a permanent seat at the imperial table. Catherine attempted to make Dashkova understand that the relationship had changed and that there must now be a limit to the claims of friendship. The nineteen years old Dashkova continued to make demands and put herself forward. To foreign ambassadors, she boasted of her influence over the empress and her advisor Panin, claiming that she was their closest friend, their confidante, their inspiration.

Alexis Gregoryevich Orlov (1737-1808),

a Russian soldier and statesman;

elder brother of Gregory Orlov

Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin in exile, 1759

The subject looming largest in Catherine's mind now was her coronation. She understood the religious and political importance of this solemn act of consecration in Moscow, the repository of Russia's national heritage, the holy city where every ruler had been crowned. Thus, on 7 Juy 1762, the same day that Peter's death was announced, Catherine proclaimed that she would be crowned in Moscow in September. On 27 August, she put seven years old Paul on the road to Moscow in the care of his tutor, Nikita Panin. On 13 September, the day Catherine made her ceremonial entrance into the city, bright sunlight sparkled on the city's gilded onion domes. The uncrowned empress, smiling and bowing, acknowledged the cheering crowds; when Paul was seen sitting beside her, the cheers were even louder. On 22 September, the day of the coronation, saluting cannon began to thunder at five in the morning when a crimson carpet was laid down the steps of the Kremlin's historic ceremonial outdoor Red Staircase. Catherine walked to the dais draped in red velvet at the center of the cathedral, mounted its six steps and seated herself on the Diamond Throne of Tsar Alexis. Traditionally, a Russian sovereign crowned himself or herself and Catherine lifted the huge imperial crown produced for her under the supervision of Ivan Betskoy and settled this ulimate symbol of sovereignty on her brow. When it was in place, she picked up the orb with her left hand, the scepter with her right and calmly looked out at the cathedral audience. In the Palace of Facets, the newly crowned empress accepted the congratulations of the nobility and the foreign ambassadors. She distributed gifts and honours; Gregory Orlov and his four brothers were created counts; Dashkova became lady-in-waiting.

Catherine II in her coronation robes by Vigilius Eriksen

Having rewarded those who had helped put her on the throne, Catherine turned next to the two powerful institutions, both pillars of the state, that had given her essential support. Both the army and the church wanted immediate reversal of specific actions by Peter III. With the army, this was easily done. To cement the favor of the officers and men, exhausted by seven years of war and smarting from the humiliation of the dishonorable peace with Prussia, she cancelled the new alliance with Frederick II. She also assured the Prussians that she had no intention of fighting them or anyone else. During her first week on the throne, couriers were riding to European capitals with assurance that the new empress wished to live in peace with all foreign powers. Her one condition was the immediate return of all Russian soldiers in the war zone. They were to fight neither for nor against Prussia and neither for nor against Austria; they were simply to return home.

Rewarding the church was more complicated. Her first step was a temporary suspension of Peter's hastily decreed confiscation of church lands and wealth. However, by imperial manifesto issued on 26 February 1764, all ecclesiastical lands and property became state property and the church itself became a state institution. All power and administrative autonomy were stripped from the clergy, high and low, and all priests became salaried employees of the state.

During the first years of Catherine's reign, Gregory Orlov was always at her side in his scarlet uniform, wearing on his chest the emblem of the empress' favor: her portrait set in diamonds. Catherine's position on the throne complicated her relationship with Gregory. She showered titles, decorations and wealth on him and his brothers, but Gregory wanted something else. She was a widow now and he wanted her to become his wife. He wanted her to belong to him during the day and in public, not merely for a few nocturnal hours behind silk curtains. The relationship took on an odd psychological balance: she controlled him because she was his sovereign and far superior in intelligence and culture; he, in turn, had power over her because he knew that she was fond of him, was indebted to him and that she felt a permanent guilt because she would not marry him. To compensate, she made him a prince of the empire; she gave him a palace in St Petersburg and another at Gatchina, set in the middle of an enormous park. Gregory became lord of vast stretches of land in Russia and Livonia. To please her, he attempted to enter the world of scholarship and intellect the empress admired. He supported the scientist Mikhail Lomonosov. He was interested in astronomy and had an observatory constructed on the roof of the Summer Palace.

By the middle of the XVIII century, Poland was in steep decline. Since 1734, the crown had been on the head of Frederick Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, who simultaneously reigned as Augustus III of Poland. The Polish government lurched and staggered from crisis to crisis, while powerful, immensely wealthy landowners ruled the country. Meddling was never more likely than in 1762, when the king of Poland was on his deathbed. It was generally assumed that his son would succeed him; he was the candidate favoured by Austria and France and by many Poles. However, he was not favored by Catherine and, without waiting for Augustus III to die, she had made a different choice. The strongest native Polish figure would have been Adam Czartoryski, a strong character and a man of influence and wealth. However, strength, experience and wealth were not the qualities that Catherine was seeking in a new king. She wanted someone weaker, more pliable - and in need of money - and she had a candidate who would suit her purpose admirably. This was her former lover - Stanislaw Poniatowski.

Not wishing her candidate's election to be seen as based purely on Russian money, she looked for another monarch to support her choice. She knew Austria and France would prefer the Saxon; she also knew that Prussia emphatically did not want another Saxon; that, in fact, it would automatically oppose whomever Maria Theresa of Austria favored. Thus Frederick II of Prussia considered Catherine's proposal. Having narrowly escaped defeat in the Seven Years' War, Prussia was exhausted, impoverished and diplomatically isolated. But Frederick II was too skillful a negotiator to rush into an arrangement in which the Polish crown was the only subject on the bargaining table. Cannily, therefore, he declared that he would cooperate with her, but only in return for what he most wanted: a Russian-Prussian alliance. And he had the alliance he wanted, a reciprocal defense treaty, binding them for eight years. Negotiation of this treaty was still incomplete when, in October 1763, Augustus III died. By then, the timing of his death was politically irrelevant; Catherine's agreement with Frederick II was fixed and the Russian-Prussian candidate had been chosen.

When news of the Russian-Prussian decision in favor of Stanislaw Poniatowski traveled to foreign capitals, it was widely assumed that the Russian empress wanted to make her former lover the king of Poland in order to marry him later and then incorporate his kingdom into her empire. In June 1764, the grand vizier of Turkey sent a note to St Petersburg declaring that his country was willing to recognize the Russian-Prussian alliance and also to approve the election of a native king to the Polish throne, but objected to the person of Poniatowski on the grounds that he was too young, too inexperienced and unmarried. The Czartoryskis accepted the logic of these objections and proposed a solution: the king-to-be would marry, preferably a Polish Catholic girl. The promise of marriage calmed the Turkish fears and the election was allowed to proceed. On 26 August 1764, Stanislaw Poniatowski was now King Stanislaw II Augustus of Poland and, as it turned out, he had become the last king of Poland. Catherine's former lover, who had dreamed of becoming her husband, became her royal vassal.

The Ottoman Empire, the neighbor of both Poland and Russia, was greatly alarmed by the growing increase in Russian military power in Poland. France, Turkey's traditional ally, was also eager to curtail Russia's growing influence in Poland. It was, therefore, not difficult for the French diplomats in Constantinopole to convince the sultan and the grand vizier that the Russian expansion must be checked and the wisest course would be to declare war before the Russians were ready. French bribes made this case persuasive and Turkey now needed only a pretext. In Ocotber 1768, the Russian troops, fighting Poles in southeastern Poland, pursued them over the border into the Turkish territory. The Ottoman Empire responded by issuing an ultimatum to the Russian ambassador, demanding that all Russian troops be removed not only from Turkish territory but from all Poland. When the Russian ambassador refused even to communicate this demand to St Petersburg, the Turks escorted him to the Seven Towers and locked him up - the Turkish protocol for declaring war.

In the spring of 1769, Russian troops occupied and fortified Azov and Taganrog, which Peter The Great had conquered and subsequently, in 1711, had been forced to return to the Turks. The Russians then took Kerch, at the point where the Sea of Azov meets the Balck Sea, providing access to the Black Sea itself. The Russian army, using Poland as its base, advanced south into the Turkish provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. General Peter Rumyantsev's forces occupied all of Moldavia and much of Wallachia up to the Danube. In 1770, Rumyantsev led his men acroos the Dniester and inflicted two devastating defeats on larger Turkish armies.

Gregory Gregoryevich Orlov (1734-1783)

Stanislaw II Augustus, King of Poland

by Johann Baptist Lampi

Catherine II by Vigilius Eriksen, after 1762

Peter Alexandrovich Rumyantsev

(1726-1796), one of the foremost Russian generals of the XVIII century;

governor of Little Russia in the name of Catherine II from the abolition of the Cossack Hetmanate in 1764-1789

Russia's surprising 1770 successes - the advance of Russian armies to the Black Sea and the Danube, the presence of a Russian fleet in the Mediterrainean and the total destruction of the Turkish fleet at Chesme - struck Europe with an astonishment heavily freighted with alarm. Although Frederick II congratulated Catherine, the last thing he desired was a war, which might bring in France and Austria against Russia and, therefore, require the participation of Prussia as Catherine's ally in the fighting.

East Prussia was physically separated from the rest of his Hohenzollern possessions and for years, Frederick II had hoped to remedy this flaw by acquiring the Polish coastal territories that split his country. Thus, in the autumn of 1770, Frederick II's diplomatic scheming was assissted by the presence of his younger brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, who was making a state visit in St Petersburg. A short man with an inexpressive demeanor, he had come to the Russian capital at the request of his brother to promote the plan for dividing up Poland. By December, the prince and the empress were seriously discussing Frederick II's proposal. In January 1771, the Austrian troops suddenly crossed the Carpathians and occupied an area in southern Poland. In March 1771, soon after his brother returned to Berlin, Frederick II wrote to Catherine suggesting that, in view of Austria's aggression, perhaps it would be appropriate if Prussia and Russia simply followed her example and took what they wanted.

On 17 February 1772, the agreement to partition Poland was signed. The Austrian empress faced a choice: either she maintained her recently signed treaty with Turkey and had to go to war with Russia with no help from any other European power or she abandoned the Turks and joined Prussia and Russia in helping herself to another, larger slice of Poland. In the end, Maria Theresa abandoned the Turks. On 5 August 1772, Emperor Joseph II, on his mother's behalf, added his signature to the agreement to partition Poland. Russia's share of was the largest in territory, comprising the eastern Poland as fas as the Dnieper River and the whole course of the Dvina River flowing north towards the Baltic Sea. This area, known as White Russia (Belorussia), was primarily of Russian stock with Russian identity, traditions and religion. Prussia's slice of Poland was the smallest, both in area and population, and Austria took a substantial piece of southern Poland, including the greater part of Galicia.

The year 1771 had produced a dissappointment on the battlefields. On the Danube, Russian generals had been unable to follow up their victories of 1770. Three years of stalemate and frustration followed. Not until the end of 1773 did Russian prospects brighten. In January 1774, Sultan Mustafa III died and was succeeded by his younger brother, Abdul Hamid I. The new sultan, recognizing the unprofitability as well as the danger of continuing the war, decided to end it. In June 1774, General Rumyantsev crossed the Danube and on 9 June, a night bayonet attack broke the Turkish lines and led to a crushing Russian victory at Kozludzhi. The grand vizier, fearing that nothing could stop the Russians from reaching Constantinopole, sued for peace. Rumyantsev opened direct negotiations in the field and he and the grand vizier agreed to terms. On 10 July 1774, in an obscure Bulgarian village, the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardzhi was signed, which brought Russia greater gains than it had dared to hope for. Catherine traded her conquests on the Danube for more important acquisitions on the Black Sea coast. Tha Balkan provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia were restored to Turkey. In exchange, Catherine gained the transfer to Russia of Azov and Taganrog and Kerch, which provided unfettered access to the Black Sea. The peace terms also included the ending of the sultan's political sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, where a Tatar khanate under Turkish protection had existed for centuries. The Crimean Tatars were now declared to be independent of Turkey. Everyone realized that the independence of the Crimea was unlikely to last; indeed, nine years later, Catherine was to annex the peninsula outright.

Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (1742-1775),

a pretender to the Russian throne who led a great Cossack rebellion during the reign of Empress Catherine II

During the last year of the war with Turkey (1773-1774), another crisis, more threatening than the foreign war, arose inside Russia. This was the rebellion known as the Pugachevshchina, after its leader, the Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev. In Orenburg province, in the village of Yaitsk, Pugachev appeared in September 1773 and proclaimed that he was Peter III and that he had eluded the assassination plotted by his enemies. Now he had returned to regain his throne, punish his enemies, save Russia and free his people. Pugachev bore no resemblance to the tall, narrow-shouldered Emperor Peter III, who had spoken mostly German, who had been a parade ground soldier and who had never seen a battle. This 'Peter' was short, stocky and muscular; his matted black hair grew in a heavy fringe across his forehead; he had a short, bushy, black beard; he was missing a number of teeth. These physical dissimilarities did not disqualify him, however, because the real Peter III had reigned too short a time for most Russians to know what he looked like.

In February 1774, Pugachev, who had abandoned his wife and three children on the Don, married Yustina Kuznetsova, the daughter of a Yaik Cossack and surrounded her with a dozen Cossack maids of honor. Pugachev's imperial decrees, proclaiming that the nobility must be killed, unleashed a frenzy of hatred. Noblemen were dragged from the hiding places, flayed, burned alive, hacked to pieces or hanged from trees. The children were mutilated and slaughtered in front of their parents. The wives were spared only long enough to be raped in front of their husbands; then they had their throats cut or were thrown into carts and carried off as prizes. Before long, Pugachev's camp was filled with captured widows and daughters, who were distributed as booty among the rebels.

Determined to crush the rebels, Catherine summoned General Alexander Bibikov and gave him full power over all available military and civilian authorities. Although the Turkish war prevented the withdrawal of any significant part of the regular army, Bibikov was assigned as many troops as could be found. The general arrived in Kazan on 26 December 1773, made it his headquarters and took immediate steps to stabilize the situation. Bibikov's forces struck quickly to relieve Orenburg, which had been under the siege for six months and where the shortage of food was acute. Pugachev was routed and galloped away to Berda.

On 23 March 1774, Pugachev left his headquarters in Berda, taking with him few thousand men and abandoning the rest of his army. Bibikov's advance guard entered Berda the same day. The scale was balanced, however, when Bibikov, suddenly developed fever and died. Pugachev himslef disappeared into the Urals. On 11 July 1774, he appeared before the town of Kazan on the Volga at the head of an army. The following day Pugachev stormed, captured and burned the almost defenseless town. Unbearded men in European dress were instantly killed; women in foreign dress were dragged away to Pugachev's camp. Nobles and their families who could get away feld to Moscow. A Russian army, already hurrying to Kazan, arrived too late to save the town, but on 15 July, it struck and defeated Pugachev. The following day, the impostor reappeared with his men. In a four hour battle, the rebel army was routed; Pugachev with the remnants of his army fled to the south, down the Volga. Immediately afterward, the impostor learned about the Russian-Turkish peace treaty and realized that regular troops would now be available to the government. By August, a veteran Russian army under Gerneral Vasily Suvorov was advancing in his direction. Pugachev's men, demoralized by defeat and retreat, began to worry about the consequences of their rebellion and in increasing numbers, they began to desert.

Catherine spent August 1774 at Tsarskoe Selo anxiously following Pugachev's rampage down the Volga. When he reappeared on 21 August before Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd), riding forward to talk to a group of Don Cossack leaders, he was publicly recognized and denounced as an impostor. On 24 August, Pugachev suffered final defeat at Sarepta, south of Tsaritsyn. The defeat became a rout. Pugachev escaped by swimming the Volga with his followers, but defeat, fear and hunger were sapping the loyalty of everyone around him. On 15 September 1774, Pugachev was back were he had begun: at Yaitsk on the Yaik River. There, a group of frightened lieutenants, hoping to save themselves by betrayal, fell on their sleeping chief and delivered him in chains to General Suvorov. On 4 November 1774, Pugachev and his rolling cage arrived in Moscow. Six weeks of interrogation began. He had confessed and expressed hope for mercy, but a death sentence was inevitable. The execution took place before an immense crowd in a Moscow square on 10 January 1775. Pugachev's two wives and three children were incarcerated in the fort of Kexholm in Russian Finland. It was forbidden to speak his name and his brother, who had not participated in the revolt, was ordered to stop using the family name. The Yaik Cossacks were renamed the Ural Cossacks and Yaitsk, their capital, and the river flowing past it were renamed Uralsk and Ural, respectively.

For eleven years, from 1761 to 1772, Catherine had been faithful to Gregory Orlov. Having failed to persuade her to marry him and finding himself unable to dominate her, he found other women. Catherine suffered but looked away. Nikita Panin, no friend of the Orlovs and seeing the empress oscillating between rage and despair, pushed forward a replacement for Orlov, a twenty-eight years old Horse Guards officer, Alexander Vasilchikov. He came from a noble family; he was modest and sweet-tempered; his manners were polished; he spoke perfect French. Dining at the court, Catherine noticed these qualities, along with his handsome face and beautiful black eyes. By August 1772, Vasilchikov had become a gentleman-in-waiting; by September, a court chamberlain, and then, suddenly, the young man was installed in Orlov's apartment in the Winter Palace.

Gregory Orlov was still waiting for negotiations to resume in the Balkans when he received an urgent message: the empress had taken a new lover. Russia's chief delegate abandoned the peace talks immediately and rushed back to St Petersburg. On the city's outskirts, he was abruptly halted; on Catherine's orders he was instructed to retire to his estate at Gatchina. After four weeks of banishment, Orlov suddenly reappeared in society, behaving as though nothing had happened. He pretended not to notice that Vasilchikov was attending to duties that had been his; he even indulged in his own brand of humor by making friends with the new favorite, praising him loudly and joking about himself. Realizing that his position was becoming ridiculous, Orlov requested permission to travel. His departure brought peace to the court, but for Catherine it was a peace paid for with boredom - Vasilchikov's intellect and personality were so limited as to make any conversation impossible. Thus the hapless man departed, generously pensioned for all his efforts and good intentions. He retired to a country estate near Moscow - a gift from the empress.

Alexander Semenovich Vasilchikov

(1744-1813), a Russian aristocrat;

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1772-1774

Gregory Alexandrovich Potemkin (1739-1791),

a Russian military leader and statesman;

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1774-1791

Empress Catherine II by Richard Brompton

Peter Zavadovsky (1739-1812),

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1774-1777

For next seventeen years, from 1774 to 1791, Gregory Potemkin became the most powerful man in Russia. Born on 13 September 1739, he began his life surrounded and coddled by a loving mother, Daria Skuratova, and five sisters. As an adolescent, he was drawn to theology, but also to the army; whichever career he chose, he said, he wished to command. He entered the army as private in the House Guards, became a corporal and, by 1759, a captain. In 1762 he joined the Orlov brothers and Nikita Panin in the coup that put Catherine on the throne.

At twenty-two, Potemkin was tall and slim, with thick auburn hair. He was intelligent, well educated and spirited. His appearance at the court and his introduction to Catherine were sponsored by the Orlovs, who admired the young soldier as an engaging conversationalist and a talented mimic who successfully impersonated the voices of people around him. Thus he was often invited to Catherine's intimate evenings, which included no more than twenty people and from which all ceremony and formality were banned.

Catherine began making use of Potemkin's administrative talents in 1763, when, aware of his interest in religion, she appointed him assistant to the Procurator of the Holy Synod, who oversaw the church administration and finances. She simultaneously advanced his military career and by 1767 he was a senior commander in the Horse Guards Regiment. The following year he became the court chamberlain. However, frustrated by Catherine's procrastination to make him the official favorite, Potemkin decided to force the issue. He came to the court only rarely and when he did he had nothing to say and then he disappeared entirely. Catherine was told that Potemkin was suffering from an unhappy love affair because a certain woman did not reciprocate his love; that his despair was so deep that he was thinking of entering a monastery. Employing his flair for the dramatic, Potemkin decided to increase the pressure on Catherine. At the end of January 1774 he entered the Alexander Nevsky Monastery on the outskirts of St Petersburg. Catherine did not want to risk Potemkin making his withdrawal permanent. According to one story, she dispatched her friend and lady-in-waiting Countess Praskovia Bruce to the monastery to see Potemkin and tell him that, if he would return to the court, he could rely on the empress' favor. Persuaded, he shed his monastic cassock, shaved off his beard, put on his uniform and returned to St Petersburg in a court carriage.

Potemkin came up with the extravagant plan - perhaps only a dream: he wanted to legalize their union by marriage. He spoke to her about it soon after he became the official favorite and it was a measure of his power over her that she considered it. If there was a marriage, it was performed on 8 June 1774. No documents have ever been seen, but there are other forms of evidence. The strongest written evidence appears to be in the language of Catherine's daily messages to Potemkin beginning in the spring of 1774. She addresses him as 'dear husband' and 'my master and tender spouse' and signs herself 'your devoted wife'.

In June 1774 Potemkin was appointed a vice president of the College of War and a governor-general of New Russia, an immense stretch of territory north of Crimea and the Black Sea. For his services in the Turkish war the favorite was awarded a diamond-studded sword and a miniature portrait of Catherine set in diamonds to be worn over his heart, a gift previously awarded only to Gregory Orlov. One after another, he received the highest grades of Russian and foreign decorations. The daughters of his widowed sister, Maria Helen Engelhardt, were brought to the court and all were created maids of honor.

After their first winter and spring together, the notes Catherine wrote to Potemkin began spelling out her emotional journey from passion to disappointment, disillusion, frustration, exasperation and pain. To Catherine, he now seemed constantly angry, whereas the theme running through her letters was her desire for peace and harmony. There were moments of their reconciliation and assurances of continued affection. Over time, however, she wearied of Potemkin's outbursts. By the time their liaison had lasted two and a half years, the storms were worsening. Potemkin constantly reproached her for condoning intrigues against him and permitting his enemies to remain in her entourage; Catherine complained that he was no longer loving, tender and cheerful. Potemkin was the most powerful man in the empire, but he remained unhappy and unfulfilled.

In the winter and spring of 1776, as the passion binding Catherine and Potemkin was ebbing and the rancor between them mounting, she found his successor. He was Peter Zavadovsky, a protege of Field Marshal Rumyantsev, the commander of the victorious Russian army in the war with Turkey. When Rumyantsev returned to St Petersburg, he brought with him two young Ukrainians, Peter Zavadovsky and Alexander Bezborodko. When the empress asked Rumyantsev to recommend talented officials for her personal secretariat, he gave her these two names. Both were appointed and both were to have brilliant careers. Zavadovsky was thirty-seven, had a handsome figure, a classical education and a modest, courteous manners. Bezborodko, on the other hand, was vulgar in appearance and rude in manner, but he was to have the more spectacular career. Zavadovsky lived for a short time in the glow of imperial favor before settling back into life as a highly respected civil servant, while Bezborodko, on the basis of his exceptional intelligence and hard work, ended by becoming a chancellor.

Zavadovsky's dark looks and quite dedication appealed to the empress and, within a month, she had attached him to her personal staff as her personal secretary. In July 1775, Zavadovsky began dining with Catherine and Potemkin. His successful appearance in the middle of the stormy relationship between Catherine and Potemkin was achieved with the agreement of the two principals. In the beginning this new arrangement worked: the presence of the quiet Ukrainian provided Catherine with relief from Potemkin's demands and mood swings; she needed this in order to govern the empire. By March 1776 Catherine, her relationship with Potemkin still unresolved, was sexually involved with Zavadovsky.

Zavadovsky pleased Catherine as she had hoped he would. He was ardent and - unique among her lovers - coveted neither honors nor riches. When he moved into the Winter Palace, all might have been well had he not developed an obsessive love for her and a consequent fierce jeolousy of Potemkin. Zavadovsky wanted - then demanded - an exclusive intimacy and complained that his predecessor's shadow always lay across his path. The empress tried to explain her situation and feelings; Zavadovsky refused to listen. Potemkin, having initially approved of his successor, now realized that Zavadovsky had become a threat, not only to his private but also to his public position. In the spring of 1777, he stayed away from Catherine's birthday celebrations, retreating to a country estate. From there he issued an ultimatum demanding Zavadovsky's dismissal. In the summer Zavadovsky left, bitter and disconsolate, and closed himself off in his estate in Ukraine. He remained away from the court for three years, returning in 1780, when he was appointed a privy councillor. In 1781 he became the director of the state bank, which was founded on a plan he had submitted. Subsequently, he became a senator and ended his career as minister of education to Catherine's eldest grandson, Emperor Alexander I.

The new relationship worked out between the empress and Potemkin had given each of them freedom to choose other sexual partners, while preserving affection and close political collaboration between themselves. Potemkin continued to love Catherine in his own way. His physical passion for her had faded, but his affection for and loyalty to her remained. Meanwhile, he was transferring his sexual approaches from one woman to another. Among these were three of his nieces - Alexandra, Varvara and Catherine - the daughters of Vasily Andreyevich Engelhardt and Maria Helen Potemkin.

Varvara attracted her uncle first; their relationship took place in 1777. Golden-haired, flirtatious and demanding, she knew how to control the prince. And she had no difficulty imposing her will on her doting uncle; she teased and misled him. The young woman had fallen in love with Sergey Fedorovich Golitsyn and was trying to find a way to win Potemkin's and Catherine's permission to marry him. She succeeded, married and produced ten children.

Varvara Vasilyevna Engelhardt (1757-1815),

niece of Gregory Potemkin and

his lover in 1777-1779

Alexandra Vasilyevna Engelhardt (1754-1838),

niece of Gregory Potemkin and

his lover in 1779

Catherine Vasilyevna Engelhardt (1761-1829),

niece of Gregory Potemkin and

his lover in 1779-1791

Varvara's sister Alexandra came next. She was two years older than Varvara and the liaison between her and Potemkin was less passionate but more serious and durable. For the rest of his life they were devoted to each other and even after she had married an influential Polish nobleman, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, Alexandra was often at Potemkin's side. When she was not with him, she was with the empress, having become one of Catherine's favorite ladies-in-waiting. She was slender, with brown hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones and impeccable dignity.

The prettiest and laziest of the Engelhardt sisters was Catherine, who yielded to Potemkin because she did not want the bother of resisting him. This relationship was less turbulent than the one with Varvara and less affectionate than that with Alexandra. She married Paul Skavronsky, but when the empress appointed him as a minister to Naples, his wife refused to accompany him, remaining in St Petersburg because her uncle wanted her to stay. When she finally departed for Italy, she found her husband chronically ill in bed. She left him there and spent her days and nights reclining on a sofa, wrapped only in a black fur coat, playing cards. While she was in Italy, Potemkin died, and when her husband also died, she returned to Russia, married an Italian count, Giulio Litta, and lived with him for the rest of her life.

When Peter Zavadovsky fell from favour in the summer of 1777, Potemkin looked around for a candidate whom Catherine might accept and whose loyalty to him he could trust. And his choice was thirty-two years old Semen Zorich, a Russian officer of Serbian descent. He was tall, handsome and polite, although he lacked notable intelligence. Zorich's tenure was briefer than Zavadovsky's. His new position went to his head. Catherine made him a count, but he demanded to be made a prince like Orlov and Potemkin. As the relationship deteriorated, Zorich could not understand why the woman who had covered him with riches had suddenly retreated. Blaming Potemkin, Zorich determined to fight for his place and challenged him; the prince disdainfully turned his back and walked away. In May 1778 Zorich was dismissed with a pension and later retired to his estate in Shklov. A compulsive gambler, he was later discovered embezzling army funds and died in disgrace.

Semen Zorich was replaced by a twenty-four years old Guard officer, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, who was handsome, played the violin and had a fine tenor voice. He was expected to be in constant attendance, was forbidden to leave the palace and became bored and restless. He escaped into the arms of Countess Praskovia Bruce, Catherine's principal lady-in-waiting and for years one of her closest friends. Foolishly, the couple believed that they could carry on their affair inside the palace. They managed for almost a year, but it ended abruptly one day when the empress discovered them making love. It is believed that Catherine was directed to the right room by Alexandra Engelhardt on the order of Potemkin, who wished for the fall of both Rimsky-Korsakov and Countess Bruce. Catherine sent a message to Rimsky-Korsakov informing him that she would be generous provided he left St Petersburg immediately and Countess Bruce was commanded to return to her husband.

Semen Gavrilovich Zorich (1743-1799),

an Imperial Russian lieutenant-general;

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1777-1778

Praskovia Alexandrovna Bruce (1729-1785),

sister of General Peter Rumyantsev;

wife of Count James Bruce, the governor of St Petersburg

Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov (1754-1831),

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1778-1779

Catherine Petrovna Stroganov (1744-1815),

daughter of Peter Nikitich Trubetskoy;

wife of Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov

There was more to this tangled plot. The empress, the court and Countess Bruce soon learned that Rimsky-Korsakov had been using the countess as a decoy with whom to pass the time and alleviate his boredom and his real object was a beautiful young countess, Catherine Stroganova, married to one of the wealthiest men in Russia. The Stroganovs had just returned from six years of living in Paris and, on first seeing Rimsky-Korsakov, the young countess fell in love. Only when the disgraced man left for Moscow and Countess Stroganova immediately followed him, was the extent of this operatic, labyrinthine double betrayal fully revealed. Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov behaved with patrician dignity. Worried that his young son would be affected by public scandal, he installed his wife in Bratsevo near Moscow, where she and her lover lived happily for thirty years. There, they brought up their children they had together - Varvara, Vladimir, Vasily and Sophia - who were given the name Ladomirsky (the name of an extinct Polish noble family) and were ennobled by Imperial Ukaz on 11 November 1798.

Alexander Dmitryevich Lanskoy (1758-1784), the lover of Empress Catherine in 1780-1784

For six months following the Rimsky-Korskaov debacle, the empress remained alone, but at Easter in 1780 a new favourite, Alexander Lanskoy, appeared and in November 1780 he was officially installed in the palace apartment vacated by Rimsky-Korsakov. The usual shower of riches descended: jewels, money and a country estate. Lanskoy did not arouse in Catherine the passion she had for Orlov or Potemkin, but his gentleness and devotion inspired in her an almost maternal affection. He was intelligent and tactful; he refused to take part in the public affairs; he was artistic, had good taste and was seriously interested in literature, painting and architecture. He became an ideal companion, accompanying the empress to concerts and the theatre, sitting quietly and listening as she talked, even helping her to design new gardens at Tsarskoe Selo. Four years passed, a longer period that Catherine had spent with any lover since she had separated from Orlov twelve years earlier. On 19 June 1784 Lanskoy complained of a sore throat. it grew worse and a high fever set in. Suddenly, five days from the onset, he died of inflammation of the throat. It was said to have been diphtheria.The suddenness of this death was overwhelming and the reaction of the woman left behind was uncontrollable grief. Catherine collapsed into bed and for three weeks refused to leave her room. Her son, his wife and her beloved grandchildren all were refused admittance; they heard only endless sobbing behind her bedroom door. Eventually, Potemkin managed to calm and distract her.

Lanskoy left to Catherine the fortune he had acquired as her favourite; she divided it equally among his mother, brother and sisters. She could not face spending the rest of the summer at Tsarskoe Selo without him, did not appear in public until September and refused to return to the Winter Palace until February 1785. Eventually, when the empress went back to Tsarskoe Selo, it was to place a Grecian urn dedicated to Lanskoy's memory in the garden where they had worked together. The deep wound caused by his death healed slowly and the favourite's apartment remained vacant for a year. When Catherine resumed life, she found only tepid consolation in the thirty years old Alexander Yermolov.

During his seventeen months as favourite, Yermolov made little claim on Catherine's time or interest. He had been Potemkin's protege, but he began behaving toward Potemkin as if he considered himself the prince's equal. Secure, he thought, in his position, he began to criticise the prince to the empress. In June 1786 an infuriated Potemkin descended on Yermolov, who was dismissed immediately and was given money in cash and permission to live abroad.

Alexander Mamonov, twenty-six years old, was another Guards officer: handsome, educated, fluent in French and Italian and the nephew of the generous Count Stroganov, whose young wife had run off with Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov. Because he was more intelligent than most of his predecessors, the empress occasionally asked his advice on political matters. Catherine was charmed by Mamonov's good looks and manners and lavished expensive gifts on him, his relatives and friends. However, despite the empress' initial enthusiasm, her relationship with Mamonov began to cool and, by January 1788, he was showing signs of weariness and there were rumours that he was attempting to evade his intimate duties. In fact, Mamonov found the restrictions involved in life with Catherine burdensome.

In the spring of 1788 Mamonov began a clandestine affair with twenty-five years old Darya Scherbatova. Soon he was writing to Potemkin, begging to be released from his relationship with the empress. Nevertheless, at the beginning of 1789, he was still the official favourite and Catherine remained deaf to any suggestions that he be replaced. Then, on 11 February 1789, they quarrelled, he asked to resign and she wept all the next day. By then, Mamonov's affair with Scherbatova was known to many at the court, although still not to Catherine. On 18 June he finally came to the empress to confess. Trembling, he admitted that for a year he had been in love with Scherbatova and that six months earlier he had given his word to marry her. The empress pardoned him and granted the couple permission to marry, even insisting that the ceremony be performed in the palace chapel. She did not attend, however gave them a country estate. Catherine had been generous, but behind her generosity was a woman badly hurt.

Alexander Matveyevich Dmitryev-Mamonov (1758-1803),

the lover of Emrpress Catherine in 1786-1789

Gregory Alexandrovich Potemkin in 1790s

by Johann Baptist von Lampi

Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (1730-1800),

Count Suvorov of Rymnik, Prince of Italy, Count of the Holy Roman Empire and the Generalissimo of the Russian Empire

Platon Alexandrovich Zubov (1767-1822),

the lover of Empress Catherine in 1789-1796

The peace between Russia and Turkey signed in 1774 was precarious. The Turks had never been reconciled to loss of territory in the south and the opening of the Black Sea to Russian merchant vessels. Once Count Potemkin began building a Black Sea Fleet, Turkish concern mounted. Then Catherine annexed Crimea in 1783. She had made her triumphant personal tour of the south, accompanied by the Austrian emperor, culminating in her inspection of the new naval base at Sevastopol, filled with warships only a two-day sail from Constantinopole. This seemed a deliberate provocation and the sultan declared war. For the Turks, however, there was a price to pay for the advantage of striking first: the Turkish declaration of war triggered Russia's secret treaty with Austria, obliging Joseph II to come to Catherine's aid. Two weeks after the Turkish declaration, the emperor told Catherine that he would honour their treaty and in February 1788 Austria declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

It was clear that Count Potemkin would be in supreme command of the Russian army. All the necessary reins of power were in his hands. He had been viceroy and commander in chief of the armed forces in the southern provinces for a decade. He had created the cities and the fleet. Moreover, he was President of War College and was familiar with the military resources available, the disposition of forces and the administrative and political details involved. He became commander in chief by merit and even the most senior general, Peter Rumyantsev, agreed to serve under him. And Alexander Suvorov, the most successful Russian battlefield commander of the age, already was under Potemkin's command.

Potemkin provided Suvorov with the strategy, the troops and the supplies; Suvorov provided Potemkin and Russia with the victories. In October 1787, the Turks began the war with an assault on the Russian fort on Kinburn, the spit of land on the eastern bank of the Dnieper estuary across from Ochakov. Two attempted landings there were beaten off by Suvorov. When winter ice formed on the Dnieper, both sides suspended campaigning and it was not until the following May 1788 that Potemkin had an army positioned before Ochakov. Despite Suvorov's urging to storm the city immediately, Potemkin had the Russian forces encircled Ochakov, bombarding the city and cutting off the defenders' supply of food and ammunition. By keeping his soldiers out of direct battle, Potemkin minimized Russian casualties, though he was accused by his generals of cowardice. The argument about storming continued in the Russian headquarters during the entirety of the siege. The condition of both armies was declining, there was a threat of disease and the weather was growing cold; finally Potemkin gave in to Suvorov's arguments. In the morning on 6 December the assault lasted only four hours and was one of the bloodiest battles in Russian military history. But with the taking of Ochakov, the path to the Dniester and the Danube lay open.

During the following year, 1789, the whole course of the Dneister fell to the Russian army. The same year Belgrade and Bucharest were taken by the Austrians. In February 1790, however, Catherine's friend and ally Emperor Joseph II died of tuberculosis. Joseph II was childless and he was succeeded by his brother, Leopold, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany, who became Emperor Leopold II. The new emperor had little interest in continuing Austria's war with Turkey and, in June 1790, he and the sultan agreed on an armistice and in August they concluded a peace, leaving Catherine to fight alone. In December 1790, despite Austria's withdrawl, the Russian army reached the lower Danube, capturing one town after another until they reached Ismail, one of the most formidable fortresses in Europe. The Turkish forces inside the fortress had the orders to stand their ground to the end and haughtily declined the Russian ultimatum. The Turks were overwhelmed by the fury of the Russian attack. Then, as he had promised the army before the assault, Suvorov unleashed his men for three days of looting. By the summer of 1791, the Russian army had forced the Turks to the peace table. In the treaty concluded at Jassy in Moldavia in December 1791, the Turks formally ceded Crimea, the mouth of the Dnieper with Ochakov and the territory between the Bug and the Dniester rivers, making the Dniester Russia's western frontier.

When the military operations were over, Potemkin turned the negotiations at Jassy over to others and headed back to St Petersburg. Even as he traveled north, however, Potemkin was worried. For the first time in the seventeen years, Catherine had acquired a new favourite of whom he vehemently disapproved: a handsome young man named Platon Zubov. It was through his distant relative, Nicholas Saltykov, that he met the empress. Saltykov presented the young officer to the court on the understanding that Zubov would then help Saltykov in his feud with Potemkin. The old courtier did not believe that the connection would last for an extended period of time. Zubov, however, managed to establish a strong hold of Catherine's affections. Poorly educated, he was vain and greedy for wealth, estates, honours and titles, not only for himself but also for his father and his three brothers. Potemkin knew that he and Zubov would now be competing for the empress' confidence.

Arriving in St Petersburg in February 1791, Potemkin quickly demonstrated that his character had not changed. The best approach, he concluded, would be to recreate the aura of their old romance. However, it was obvious to Potemkin that Catherine wanted her relationship with Zubov to continue. He tried to distract himself by giving and attending receptions, dinners and balls. The evening that surpassed anything ever seen in Russia occurred on 28 April 1791, at Potemkin's Tauride Palace. At the end of the evening, following a ball and an extravagant supper, Catherine and Potemkin withdrew alone to the winter garden to walk between the fountains and marble statues. When they spoke, Potemkin mentioned Zubov, but she did not reply. Catherine stayed until two in the morning, later than she had ever remained at a party. Escorted to the door by her old lover, she stopped to thank him and finally they said goodbye. Overwhelmed, he threw himself at her feet; when he looked up, both were in tears. After she left, Potemkin stood quietly for a few minutes, then walked alone to his room.

On 24 July 1791 Potemkin left Tsarskoe Selo for the last time. He was already tired and the journey to the south further exhausted him. He reached Jassy only eight days after leaving the Neva. The journey drained his declining strength; on arriving, he wrote to Catherine that he felt the touch of the hand of death. His illness showed symptoms of the malaria that had infected him in Crimea in 1783. Traveling south, he refused to take any medicines prescribed by the three doctors accompanying him. Instead of dieting, as the doctors recommended, he ate huge meals and drank heavily. When he reached Jassy, his staff sent for his niece, Alexandra Branicki, hoping that she could persuade him to be reasonable and accept treatment. In the middle of September, he had an attack of fever and shivered uncontrollably for twelve hours. Every day, he asked repeatedly whether any messages had come from the empress; when a new letter arrived, he wept and read it, then kissed it repeatedly. When state documents were brought and read to him, he could barely scribble his signature at the bottom. It was clear that he was dying; Potemkin himself realised it. He asked for the Last Sacrament and, once it had been given, he relaxed. Gradually, the passionate, ambitious man, only fifty-two, became calm; those around him watched him dying in serenity. On 5 October 1791, Gregory Potemkin died. In the evening of 12 Ocotber a courier bringing the news reached the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Catherine, hearing the news, collapsed. The empress was distraught and ordered social life in St Petersburg be put on hold.

Whilst Poland's neighbors were preoccupied with wars - Russian and Austria were engaged in hostilities with the Ottoman Empire - and unable to intervene forcibly in Polish affairs, on 3 May 1791 the new constitution was read and adopted to overwhelming popular support. The Russian empress was furious over the adoption of the document, which Catherine believed threatened Russian influence in Poland. On 18 May 1792 the Russian ambassador to Poland, Yakov Bulgakov, delivered a declaration of war to Joachim Chreptowicz, the Polish Foreign Minister. However, the war ended without any decisive battles, with a capitulation signed by Polish King Stanislaw II August, who hoped that a diplomatic compromise could be worked out. By December 1792 Catherine had decided that the only solution to growing chaos was to formalise the occupation in a second partition. Frederick William II of Prussia was offered the areas in the north and west that Prussia had long desired. In January 1793 Russia and Prussia secretly signed a treaty that sealed the Second Partition of Poland. Unaware of this treaty, Poland's conservative leaders asked Catherine for assurance that she would protect the physical integrity of their country. It was too late: early in April 1793 Russian and Prussian manifestos announcing the new partition were published. In effect, the treaty with Russia turned newly truncated Poland into a protectorate. All domestic and foreign policies were to be submitted for Russian approval; the personnel of the government would be approved by St Petersburg; the Polish army would be reduced. Russia's share of Poland was large: eastern Poland, including the rest of Belorussia, with the city of Minsk; further extensive slices of Lithuania, including Vilnius and the remaining Polish Ukraine. Prussia acquired the long-coveted regions of Danzig and Thorn, as well as other territory in western Poland. Austria had no share in the spoils this time, but Francis II was promised that Prussia would remain an active ally in Austria's war against France.

Empress Catherine by Alexander Roslin

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746-1817), a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer and leader;

fought against Russia and Prussia

By the spring of 1794 many Poles had concluded that the further mutilation of their country and the humiliating constitutional settlement imposed were intolerable. In March, when the disarming of the Polish army was attempted and the reduced units were to be incorporated into the Russian army, the nation rose up. Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish officer who had fought beside George Washington and Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette in the American War of Independence, suddenly appeared in Kracow and took command of Polish rebel forces.

Catherine placed Rumyantsev in the overall command of her army in Poland and Suvorov in tactical command. On 10 October Suvorov defeated Kosciuszko, who was severely wounded, captured and sent to St Petersburg, where he was locked in the Schlusselburg Fortress. On 4 November 1794, Suvorov's forces next appeared before Praga, the fortified suburb across the Vistula from Warsaw. The massacre of Praga broke the spirits of the defenders and soon put an end to the uprising. Suvorov then used the carnage as an example to warn Warsaw that if it did not surrender, it would be treated as another Praga. Warsaw capitulated immediately and armed resistance throughout Poland came to an end.

The next step was to agree on a new division of the Polish territory. On 3 January 1795 Russia and Austria agreed to the third and final partition of Poland. Prussia, still at war with France, was told that the territory it desired could be taken whenever it was ready to do so. On 5 May Prussia made the peace with revolutionary France and occupied its allocated slice of Poland. Russia's prizes were Courland, what was left of Lithuania, the remaining part of Belorussia and the western Ukraine. Prussia took Warsaw and the west of the Vistula and Austria took Kracow, Lublin and western Galicia. On 25 November 1795 King Stanislaw II Augustus, his kingdom dismembered, abdicated. When Catherine died a year later, the new emperor Paul I invited the former king to St Petersburg, where he was housed in the Marble Palace that the empress had built for Gregory Orlov. He died there in 1798.

In the 1790s Catherine's health was declining. For years, she had suffered from headaches and indigestion; now colds and rheumatism were added. By the summer of 1796 she was afflicted by open leg sores. Sometimes swollen and bleeding, her legs bothered her so much that she tried soaking them daily in fresh seawater. On 4 November 1796 Catherine appeared in public for the last time when a small number of close friends gathered at the Hermitage. She retired early, explaining that she had laughed so hard that she needed to rest. The next morning, on 5 November, she drank her usual black coffee and sat down to write. She asked to be left alone for a moment and went into her dressing room, where she collapsed from a stroke. Worried by her absence, her attendant, Zakhar Zotov, opened the door and peered in. Catherine's body was sprawled on the floor; her face appeared purplish, her pulse was weak and her breathing was shallow and laboured. The officials who gathered agreed to send urgently for Grand Duke Paul. Platon Zubov immediately sent his brother Nicholas galloping to Gatchina to notify the heir. Paul ordered a sleigh and left immediately with Maria for St Petersburg. The grand duke found his mother lying on the mattress, motionless, her eyes closed. Kneeling, Paul kissed her hands; there was no response and he and Maria sat down near her for the rest of the night. Paul sent for Chancellor Bezborodko and told him to prepare a manifesto announcing his accession. At noon, the grand duke ordered the chancellor to sort and seal the papers in his mother's study under the supervision of his sons, then to lock the study and bring him the key. Despite all attempts to revive the empress, she fell into a coma and never recovered. On the night of 6 November, without ever recovering her consciousness, Catherine died. On 8 November, the new emperor went to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, where the coffin of the man he believed was his father, Peter III, was opened. On 2 December, a procession left the monastery to escort the coffin to the Winter Palace. On 5 December, the two coffins were carried across the ice of the frozen Neva River to the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, where they were placed near the tomb of Peter The Great.