Sex with the Queen (34 page)

Soldiers quickly swarmed her carriage as regiments raced to support her. By nine o’clock in the morning, she was kneeling at the high altar of Kazan Cathedral, receiving the archbishop’s blessing as Catherine II, autocrat of all the Russias. She would not rule as regent for her eight-year-old son Paul—a reign that would have ended when he turned sixteen—but as empress in her own right until her death.

After receiving the church’s blessing, Catherine quickly changed into the green uniform of a colonel of the guards, a flaring coat, knee breeches, high black boots, and a fur-trimmed tricorn hat. She rode at the head of her troops to review the fourteen thousand men at arms who had proclaimed their loy-alty. The new ruler looked like an ancient Greek goddess of vic-tory, bold, confident, triumph shining in her eyes, her long dark hair tumbling in waves down to her waist.

Suddenly a twenty-two-year-old subaltern of the horse guards rode boldly out to her and, remarking that her uniform was lacking a sword knot, he gallantly gave her his own. His supe-rior officers disapproved of his audacity, but the empress, pleased at his chivalric gesture and handsome appearance, ac-cepted his gift with a smile. She asked his name. It was Gregory Potemkin.

For the next twelve years he would dream of a proud young empress in a green uniform, astride a white horse, a glorious fu-ture reflected in her smile. After the tumults of that day, the young soldier went to his room and wrote her a love poem: “As soon as I beheld you, I thought of you alone. Your lovely eyes cap-tivated me, yet I trembled to say I loved. O Heavens! The torture to love one to whom I dare not declare it. One who can never be mine! Cruel Gods!”33 But the gods were not as cruel as he thought. Potemkin would have his chance with her, but not yet.

Meanwhile, Peter and his companions arrived at Peterhof to find the palace almost empty and Catherine nowhere in sight.

Upon learning of the coup, Peter’s advisers urged him to flee the country to save his life, to return to the town of Kiel, which he possessed as duke of Holstein. Peter, however, petulantly in-sisted that he return to negotiate with his wife. He should have 1 5 4

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

fled; the Orlov brothers took Peter prisoner and forced him to sign an act of abdication. A disappointed Frederick the Great dryly remarked that Peter III “let himself be driven from the throne as a child is sent to bed.”34

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Catherine was not vin-dictive. She would have preferred to send poor stammering Pe-ter back to his duchy of Holstein. “This young man, frankly speaking, deserved pity rather than censure,” she wrote in her memoirs.35 But she knew that as long as he lived, her husband would always be a focus of discontent and rebellion, and her throne would sit on a shaky foundation. Catherine was, above all, a practical woman. Within a week, Peter was dead.

Gregory Orlov’s brother Alexis had killed him, claiming in a letter to Catherine that it had occurred accidentally during a drunken brawl. For the public viewing, the corpse wore a high collar to cover the black finger marks on its neck and a huge hat to shade the face black and swollen from asphyxiation. Doctors declared the emperor had died of a “hemorrhoidal colic” with brain complications. Few Russians were upset at Peter’s murder.

Even the great philosopher Voltaire, a friendly correspondent of Catherine’s, shrugged off the matter. “I know that she is re-proached with some trifles about her husband,” he wrote, “but these are family affairs with which I do not meddle.”36

Upon taking the throne she found an empty treasury, two hundred thousand peasants on strike, a restless army unpaid for eight months, rebellion across the empire, unfathomable cor-ruption in the legal system, and a near paralysis of commerce.

Working fourteen hours a day, Catherine undertook reorganiza-tion of almost every aspect of Russian government with tradi-tional German efficiency, presiding personally over council and senate meetings, peppering officials with probing questions they could not answer, and prolonging their working hours. Cather-ine worked her ministers harder than any man could have. In-deed, she considered herself a male soul wrapped in a female body, and though delighting in that body, she considered other women weak, whining, and utterly useless.

Within a year of taking the throne she had founded an e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 5 5

orphanage, a school for midwives, an organization for public health, and a school for the daughters of the nobility. An avid student of French philosophy, at the outset of her reign Cather-ine hoped to create a just and equitable society. Out of a popu-lation of some nineteen million Russians, almost eight million were serfs, slaves owned either by individual families or the state itself. Russian wealth was usually measured in serfs—or “souls,”

as they were called—rather than money or land. Catherine, who had hoped to free the serfs, soon found that this lofty goal was all but impossible in her turbulent realm. Threatened by the loss of their most prized possessions, the nobles who had supported her would have toppled her. “You philosophers are lucky men,” she wrote to Denis Diderot. “You write on paper and paper is pa-tient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.”37

She invited to Russia doctors, dentists, engineers, craftsmen, architects, gardeners, artists, and, of course, her favorite philosophers. Her offers were not always accepted. The philoso-pher Jean d’Alembert, obviously referring to Peter’s death, sent his regrets. “I am too subject to hemorrhoids,” he explained.

“They are too serious in that country and I want to have my rear end hurt in complete safety.”38

At the outset of her reign, no one thought she would survive more than a few months. One French visitor called Russia “an absolute monarchy tempered by assassination.”39 And indeed Catherine started, horrified, whenever there was a sudden noise, as if expecting a knife or bullet to rip into her back. Suffering from intense stress, she put on weight and aged rapidly in the months after her accession.

To secure more firmly her shaky grip on the throne, Cather-ine generously rewarded her supporters. All five Orlov brothers were made counts and given large amounts of cash. Gregory Potemkin, whom she had not forgotten, was promoted two ranks and given ten thousand rubles, an ample reward for a sword knot.

Never one to hold a grudge, Catherine gave her dead hus-band’s obnoxious mistress, Elizabeth Vorontsova, a house in 1 5 6

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

Moscow and arranged for her to marry a senator. Sergei Saltikov was appointed envoy to France, given twenty thousand rubles for his journey and two years later loaned twenty thousand more to clear his considerable debts. His reputation as a scoundrel wafted around him like a bad odor; the ladies avoided him as much as the politicians he was supposed to court. Jaded, faded Saltikov, his jowl sagging a bit more with each passing year, must have kicked himself for having so unceremoniously dumped the insignificant little grand duchess. He soon dropped out of the foreign service, living in obscurity until his death in 1813.

Stanislaus Poniatowski, who had always remained on good terms with Catherine, received the greatest reward of all, a crown. In 1763 Catherine signed a treaty with Frederick the Great of Prussia in which Frederick would not protest Ponia-towski’s election as king of Poland. The Polish crown was part reward for his former services in bed, part political strategy; Catherine knew that Poniatowski’s gentle nature would render him a mere puppet of Russia. At first, he refused the crown.

“Don’t make me king, but bring me back to your side,” he im-plored, still deeply in love with her.40 But having enjoyed Orlov’s animalistic rutting, she shuddered at the thought of Poniatowski’s pale slender hands upon her.

He finally relented and once seated on the Polish throne tried his best to be a good king. Catherine quickly dispelled any illu-sions he might have had of his own power, however. She sent thousands of troops to Warsaw to keep the peace, as she said, but in reality to force her puppet king to dance to a Russian tune.

As empress in her own right, Catherine no longer had reason to hide her love affair with Gregory Orlov. Indeed, she flaunted him, taking his arm proudly; in palace ballrooms this brilliant pair parted the crowds as Moses had parted the Red Sea. Orlov was such a splendid specimen of manhood that even those at court who detested him were forced to admit his overwhelming physical magnificence. For all his brute strength, he had the fea-tures of a classical statue and moved with an elegant animal grace. A stranger arriving at court could pick out the empress’s lover at a glance—the tallest, handsomest man in the room, e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 5 7

wearing the finest gold-embroidered suit with diamond buttons, and a large miniature of Catherine hanging from his breast, set in a frame of huge diamonds. Orlov was a tremendous asset to the court for his decorative value alone.

Catherine’s lover was often seen reclining on a couch in the empress’s bedroom, wearing only a bathrobe. Lazy and in love with the trappings of royalty, he had few political ambitions. The French envoy reported that Orlov was “very handsome, but very stupid.”41

Many at court hated the increasing arrogance and power of the Orlovs. All petitions and favors passed through their hands.

Gregory Orlov held a morning reception as if he were royal himself, and all favor seekers were expected to show up and pay their respects. Princes of noble lineage were forced to trot next to his carriage as mounted escorts when he sat inside.

Over the first decade of her reign, Catherine remained faith-ful to her lover, putting up patiently with his increasing moodi-ness, rude treatment, and flagrant infidelities. The French envoy wrote, “He is emperor in all but name and takes liberties with his sovereign such as no mistress in polite society would tol-erate from her lover.”42 Catherine loved him passionately, but her love was tempered by fear. The Orlov brothers had brought her to the throne and had murdered an emperor for her. She had rewarded all five with key government positions. Boasting thousands of devoted supporters in the army and government, the kingmakers could, perhaps, unmake an empress.