Great Catherine (26 page)

empress's ire against Catherine. Yet she could tell that the empress was far more impressed by her well-reasoned answers than by Peter's impassioned spoutings. "She listened," Catherine later wrote in her memoirs, recalling the scene in detail, "with particular attention and a sort of involuntary approval to my firm, even-toned answers." Elizabeth knew perfectly well that Peter wanted to dethrone his wife and replace her with his mistress, and she was not about to indulge his whim. Still, there were serious issues to be discussed.

Finally, at about three in the morning, the empress spoke in low tones to Catherine. "I have much to tell you, but I can't speak, because I don't want you to become more embroiled than you already are." Catherine took heart, and whispered back that she wanted nothing more than "to open her heart and soul" to Elizabeth.

Catherine had won, for the moment. Once again she saw tears of sympathy glistening in the empress's eyes before she abruptly took her leave. Without so much as a glance at Catherine, Peter marched out and retured to his rooms. Catherine herself, her mind still whirling with all that had happened, made her way back to her apartments. Once there, while her women were preparing her for bed, she heard a knock at the door. It was Alexander Shuvalov, who had stayed behind to confer with Elizabeth.

"The empress sends her compliments," he said gravely, "and begs you not to be distressed. She will confer with you alone."

Enormously relieved, Catherine bowed deeply to Count Shuvalov and sent her compliments in return. In the following days Catherine's spies repeated to her what Elizabeth was saying to everyone: "She's brilliant, my niece," she insisted. "She loves truth and justice. But my nephew is an idiot."

Chapter Fiiteen

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THE WAR AGAINST PRUSSIA WAS IN ITS THIRD YEAR, AND THE Russian troops, once thought to be ill equipped and in disarray, were proving to be more than a match for the soldiers of Frederick II.

The business of soldiering consumed the capital. The roads were full of troops, soldiers spilled out of the taverns, singing and brawling and taunting one another while at court, little was talked of save the army and its fortunes.

Though her frequent attacks of illness made her involvement intermittent, the empress followed the course of the war with great vigor. No expense was too great, no sacrifice too extreme when it came to the well-being of Russia's fighting men, she declared. To finance the war she would, if necessary, sell all her clothes and jewelry. (She had vast stores of both, having replenished her wardrobe in the years since the burning of the palace.) When the Russians won a battle, Elizabeth ordered medals struck to commemorate it and issued decorations to the victorious officers. They strode about proudly, gold and silver flashing on their chests, talking of their exploits—and avoiding, if possible, any contact with the pro-German grand duke, with his Holstein guard and his ring-portrait of the Prussian ruler.

After each battle, the courtiers came together to discuss which

officers had shown the greatest bravery, which had been promoted, which had suffered wounds or had died in combat. At times the losses ran high. In the grisly Battle of Zorndorf, a scene of horrifying slaughter, tens of thousands of Russians and Prussians were killed. When news of the outcome reached Petersburg there was great consternation, and for weeks afterward the courtiers met in anguished little circles to mourn their dead and dying; nearly everyone in the imperial household lost at least one relative or friend. It was difficult to believe, as the empress claimed, that the Russians had won the battle and that celebrations were in order.

Amid the lamentations there was one bright episode. People repeated to one another the remarkable story of a certain Gregory Orlov, an artillery officer in the elite Ismailovsky regiment.

A giant of a man whose broad shoulders, long muscular legs and rocklike torso made him the most formidable soldier in his regiment, Orlov had shown not only daring but phenomenal stamina at Zorndorf. With men dying all around him, he hurled himself into the thick of the melee, into the very teeth of the murderous Prussian fire. His comrades, seeing him fall, called out to him to save himself. To their amazement he rose again and, instead of seeking safety, returned to the fray. Three times he was wounded, and three times he overcame his pain to dare death once again.

Orlov's praises were sung wherever soldiers gathered—in the taverns of the capital, in the guards barracks, even in the drawing rooms of the royal palace. His exploits were not limited to the field of battle, it was said; he took huge risks at the gaming tables, was an audacious hunter, and had survived many a bloody tavern brawl. Women fell at his feet, charmed by the lure of his strong body and handsome face. It was whispered that he was indefatigable in bed.

One woman in particular had not been able to resist him. She was Helen Kurakin, the beautiful mistress of the colonel of Orlov's regiment, Peter Shuvalov. With consummate audacity

Orlov had abducted Helen, risking—at the very least—execution at his powerful colonel's hands. Yet as always, by defying death Orlov defeated it. Before he could take vengeance on Orlov, Shuvalov died, leaving Orlov free to enjoy his lovemaking and greatly enhancing his reputation for fearlessness and invincibility.

Gregory Orlov came to Petersburg in the spring of 1759, in the retinue of an eminent Prussian prisoner of war, Count Schwerin, former adjutant to Emperor Frederick. The count was housed in splendid comfort, and became a frequent guest at the palace, where he spent his time with the grand duke. There Catherine saw Orlov—no doubt having heard of his remarkable war record, as everyone in the capital had, in advance of his arrival.

She was overawed by what she saw. Not only was the magnificent Orlov the bravest man in the war, he was obviously the best looking. So tall he towered over his brother officers, and so strong he could wrestle most of them to the ground, Orlov was an antique hero come to life. No ancient Roman could be more admirable, Catherine thought, than this intrepid guardsman with his dogged courage and bold warlike spirit—not to mention his reputed virility. She was enthralled, and she singled the tall Orlov out for special favor.

Catherine had reached an impasse. Her former political allies, chief among them ex-chancellor Bestuzhev, had been disgraced and exiled. She herself had narrowly escaped arrest, and held on to her status at court only at the empress's whim. Her lover Poniatowski had been sent away, and she knew that it would be unrealistic of her to hope for his return. She was in great need of supporters, yet to recruit or encourage them exposed her to more political danger. And though still attractive, she was no longer young; in the same month that Gregory Orlov arrived in Petersburg, the grand duchess turned thirty, and was, by the standards of the time, well past the prime of her beauty.

Jean Louis Favier, a French informant who saw Catherine often at this time, wrote his impressions of her—impressions based on close observation and shrewd assessment. Favier was no partisan

of Catherine's, indeed he was resolutely opposed to the Young Court and inclined to debunk the rather exaggerated praise heaped on the grand duchess by her admirers.

As to her personal attractions, Favier wrote, Catherine was, "to say the least, dazzling." Her waist was slender, but not supple; she walked with a noble carriage yet lacked grace, affecting the grand manner and rather overdoing it. Her breasts were lacking in fullness, and her long, thin face with its faint blemishes, its prominent chin, flat mouth and nose "with a tiny little hump," was also too narrow for real beauty. Her eyes, "alert and pleasant," were not particularly lovely. On the whole Favier concluded that Catherine was "pretty rather than ugly," but without exceptional beauty.

As for her abilities and character, Favier dismissed the "unfounded praise" of others but noted that, because of the enforced isolation imposed on her throughout her time in Russia, she had become exceptionally well read; her mind, though not brilliant, was well furnished. She had educated herself in the expectation that she would one day need to serve as her husband's chief adviser. "Reading and reflection were for her the sole means to that end," it seemed to Favier. And she had done a creditable job not only of informing herself about many things but of teaching herself to think.

Catherine was nothing if not a speculative thinker; abstract questions and philosophical issues were meat and drink to her curious, lively mind. However, it seemed to the Frenchman that in indulging this pronounced intellectual taste she was making a fundamental error. "Instead of acquiring theoretical and practical knowledge of state administration," he wrote, "she devoted herself to the metaphysics and moral systems of current thinkers." (Apparently Favier was not aware that for some years Catherine had in fact been serving a useful apprenticeship in practical administration, governing Peter's Holstein estates.) From her reading of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot's Encyclopedic she had acquired lofty ideas about reforming the uneducated, edifying

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them and teaching them to reason and to think judiciously; she envisioned being able to govern them, not as Russians had traditionally been governed, through fear, brute force and superior strength, but through persuasion and the rigor of impartially administered law.

Catherine had evolved, Favier believed, "a code of political convictions, quite elevated, but unworkable in practice." It would be not only impossible but quite dangerous to try to apply such high-minded concepts to the harsh realities her husband would face—with her help—when he became emperor. The Russians were, after all, a barbarous people, according to Favier, "a rude people devoid of ideas and rich in superstition, lacking cultivation and accustomed only to dumb and fearful enslavement." The barbarity of Russia was immemorial, it would be the height of folly to attempt to teach the Russian people new traditions.

Yet if Favier looked unfavorably on Catherine's intellectual attitudes, he was quick to defend her character against the charge that because of her love affairs, she was a woman governed by her passions, and without moral integrity.

"Her inclination to coquetry has also been exaggerated," Favier wrote. She was "a woman of feeling," with a yearning for love; she "yielded only to the inclination of the heart and, perhaps, the quite natural desire to have children."

For a brief time in her early thirties Catherine's inclination toward motherhood was indulged. The empress allowed her to see her children once a week, and she made the journey from Oranienbaum to Petersburg regularly. Her baby daughter Anna Petrovna was still a gurgling, crowing infant, just beginning to crawl, when Catherine began her visits, and as the weeks passed she watched the baby learn to stand and then to take her first steps. Paul, a blond, brown-eyed child of four, was sickly when his mother first visited him, and notably undersized. No doubt Catherine could not look at him without being reminded of Saltykov, while baby Anna, daughter of the kinder and more

devoted Poniatowski, aroused in her more pleasant, if sadly nostalgic, memories.

Little Anna was never to grow up. Late in the winter she sickened, quite possibly a victim of freezing palace drafts, and in March of 1759 she died. No one recorded the nature of the illness, or whether her death was a quiet fading away or the result of prolonged suffering. Was Catherine permitted to stay with her little daughter in her last days or hours? We will never know. Catherine left no record of her feelings about losing her daughter; perhaps her silence is eloquent testimony to her grief. Infant death was an all-too-common tragedy in the mid-eighteenth century, and daughters were valued far less highly than sons. Still, it is hard to imagine that the tenderhearted Catherine was not saddened by her loss, and she must have felt bereft as she stood beside the small coffin and listened to the funeral prayers and the chanting of the monks.

In those melancholy hours she must have felt keenly her son's precarious mortality as well. He was far from robust. Would he too die, depriving her of the all-important contribution she had made to the Romanov succession? If Paul were to die, Peter would have a plausible excuse for putting Catherine in a convent and marrying the younger, arguably more fertile Elizabeth Vorontzov.

The Vorontzov fortunes were rising. Michael Vorontzov had replaced the exiled Bestuzhev as chancellor, and his niece Elizabeth had installed herself in Peter's apartments, giving herself airs and doing the honors as if she were already his wife. Catherine was aware that nothing pleased Peter and his mistress more than her own current state of disgrace, and that Peter felt confident that he could count on remarrying before long. Catherine referred to Elizabeth as "Madame Pompadour," a joking reference to the younger woman's quite serious and quite dangerous campaign to supplant her, as Pompadour had supplanted Louis XV's Queen.

Once again the court was caught up in following the war. In the

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summer of 1759, the Russian army engaged the Prussians at Kunersdorf, only sixty miles east of Berlin. For twelve hours the massed ranks formed, stood and fired, receiving fire in their turn, hundreds of men falling with each volley. The sun beat down mercilessly on the smoke-filled battlefield, and the Prussians, outnumbered, numb with hunger and fatigue, began to abandon their ranks. Emperor Frederick himself took the field to rally them, knowing that the fate of his capital hung in the balance yet willing to risk all for the sake of victory. His heroism turned the tide for a time, but eventually the Prussians were routed.