Part 10

While the Grand Duke delighted in playing with his Holstein soldiers, he found the administration of the government, for which he had been responsible since the age of nineteen, tedious and burdensome. He relied much on the Grand Duchess whom he called Madame la Ressource. While Brockdorf contested her influence in Holstein affairs, she nevertheless retained first place in the long run. It was a great relief to Peter to hand the seal over to her along with all important and difficult documents and to forget the government of Holstein while he paraded his fascinating soldiers. In time it came about that the diplomats who had anything to say about Holstein consulted Catherine directly and accepted her decision. Things went on in this wise for a series of years until the Empress, suddenly discovering that Holstein was being ruled by the Grand Duchess, issued a ukase that the Grand Duke should take care of these political matters himself. It was a ukase, however, which commanded the impossible.

4

In the autumn of 1755 an Englishman came to Petersburg. He was a man just past middle age, a Whig, and an aristocrat. He had been for nine years in the diplomatic service and was known for his caustic wit and elegant manners. His satirical poetry was much admired. These talents, however, were not always an asset. Six years previously he had been sent to Berlin as Ambassador at the court of Frederick the Great. But Frederick had not liked the biting tongue of the man and had asked for his removal. The Englishman was sent back to his old post at Dresden where August the Strong was apparently oblivious to his satire. Not being a satirist himself, as was Frederick the Great, perhaps he could more comfortably endure the presence of a rival. Transferred to the Court of Petersburg, the sophisticated Englishman found himself in a still less intellectual atmosphere than that of the Saxon court. Catherine says that the art of conversation was unknown among the Russian courtiers of that time. The arrival of a polished diplomat who dealt in brilliant talk and repartee could not fail to make a great impression on the Grand Duchess although most of his barbs were lost on the card-playing court which surrounded Elisabeth. The name of the interesting Englishman was Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.

As Ambassador to the Saxon Court, Williams had spent much time in Poland, over which August of Saxony ruled as elective king. In Warsaw, the Chevalier had made friends with the Czartorisky clan and the Poniatovsky family. A strong-minded daughter of the Czartoriskys had married Count Stanislas Poniatovsky and her son was likewise Count Stanislas. The young man was adored by his mother and patronized by her brothers, the powerful Czartoriskys. His career was the subject of earnest family conclaves. When Sir Charles Hanbury Williams offered to take him to Russia as Secretary it was decided that Stanislas should go. The Ambassador was almost twenty-five years older than his Polish secretary and called him his son. In Petersburg they lived together in the house of Count Skavronsky on the bank of the Neva.

The Grand Duchess met them both for the first time on St. Peter’s day at Oranienbaum. She sat beside Chevalier Williams at supper and conversed with him while she admired the graceful dancing of his secretary. It was the beginning of a political and personal alliance which rapidly developed among the three. Poniatovsky became her lover, while the Chevalier, ever attentive from the background and regularly corresponding with her, was in some curious vicarious fashion also in love with the fascinating and aggressive Catherine. Sitting at supper one evening with Poniatovsky vis-à-vis, the Grand Duchess threw out this remark, ostensibly addressed to the French Ambassador, “There was never a woman bolder than I; I have an unbridled temerity.” There was much recklessness in her at this time.

The English Ambassador had come to Russia with a special mission from George II, who was anxious lest Frederick the Great should turn covetous eyes on Hanover as he had on Silesia. Williams was empowered to offer an annual subsidy of five hundred thousand livres to Russia in return for which Russia was to stand ready to aid Hanover against any possible depredations on the part of the Prussian King. Such a treaty between England and Russia, Williams actually got signed in September 1755. But no sooner was this done than the wily Frederick put through the Treaty of Westminster in which he and the German-English George mutually guaranteed their possessions against both France and Russia. This created a complicated situation for the English diplomat. The Russian Empress loathed Frederick the Great and wanted no allies in common with him. Russia therefore disregarded the treaty begun in the Fall of 1755 and refused to accept the five hundred thousand livres which England had sent. Williams spent his time in Petersburg trying in vain to induce the Russian government to take his money. He also found himself in the curious position of having to represent the interests of Frederick the Great after he had started to work against them. Opposed to him was the whole French party headed by the powerful Ivan Shuvalov, favorite of the Empress. The Chevalier was left to cultivate the Grand Ducal court and this he did with whole-hearted enthusiasm. He advised Catherine about the government of Holstein which was at that time in her hands and succeeded in buying the Grand Chancellor Bestushev with a pension of twelve thousand rubles a year from the English Government.

Unfortunately for his schemes, Bestushev was no longer a power at court. Ivan Shuvalov had gathered the reins into his own hands as the health of the Empress declined. But Williams regarded Bestushev as a fine capture. He wrote an enthusiastic account of his success to Catherine and concluded his letter thus: “These are the scenes written in haste which will make delightful anecdotes for a future century. You alone have my secret; my heart, my life, my soul are yours. I regard you as a creature wholly superior to myself. I adore you and my adoration goes so far I am persuaded that I can have no merit apart from you.... Here is my castle in Spain which I have been building for some time and with which I often amuse myself. When you come to your place on the throne, I shall not be here. I shall come here at once.... I should wish to come with the character of ambassador in my pocket but I should not wish to produce it, because that would oblige me to maintain a rank and etiquette which would disturb me. And I flatter myself that I should live much with you as a faithful servant and humble friend. I should have the entrée to and profit by your hours of leisure, because I always love Catherine better than the Empress....”

Both Poniatovsky and Williams have left extensive records of their experiences in Russia. This is how Catherine looked at the age of twenty-six in the eyes of her Polish lover. “At this time she had attained that degree of beauty which represents for every woman to whom beauty is given at all the climax of its development. Her hair was black, her skin a dazzling white and vivid red; she had large blue, round, very expressive eyes, very long black lashes, a Greek nose, a mouth which seemed to ask for kisses. Her arms and shoulders were surpassingly beautiful; she had a tall graceful figure and her walk was very agile though full of nobility, the sound of her voice was pleasant, and her laugh as joyous as her temperament.” The Grand Duchess found in Count Poniatovsky the romantic lover for whom she had all her life been longing.

5

During the summer of 1756, Count Poniatovsky departed for Warsaw to make a brief visit. He failed to return at the expected time and the Grand Duchess bestirred herself to have him recalled to Russia as Polish Ambassador. She enlisted Williams and Bestushev to this end and showered favors upon them until the two elderly diplomats began to be jealous of each other. She had done her work almost too well. At last, however, she succeeded in her purpose and the Grand Chancellor was able to secure the young Pole’s return. He imposed as a condition, however, that Poniatovsky should no longer live with Williams on such intimate terms as formerly. The way was now clear for Poniatovsky’s return, but still he lingered in Poland. What was the obstacle? A letter which he sent to Catherine explains the cause of his delay.

“And this is how it is. By dint of questioning me with all the tenderness and adroitness possible, my mother understands clearly what it is that makes me so ardently wish to return to you.... I pressed her more strongly to consent formally to my return; she said to me with tears in her eyes that she foresaw with grief that this affair was going to cause her to lose my affection on which she depended for all the happiness of her life; that it was hard to refuse some things but in the end she was determined not to consent. Upon which I was beside myself; I threw myself at her feet and begged her to change her sentiments. She said, melting into tears, ‘This is just what I expected.’ Nevertheless she went away, pressing my hand, and left me in the most horrible dilemma I have ever experienced in my life.... Oh, Poutres [his nickname for Catherine] ... share with Bonn [Williams] this story about my mother and beg him to write my father and ask him to send me back over there because I am necessary to him. For among other things she disputes with me that I am necessary to him....”

With the assistance and encouragement of one of his Czartorisky uncles, the young Count finally escaped from his mother and arrived in Petersburg in time for the Russian Christmas of 1756. He remained in Russia as the lover of Catherine for another year and a half, and left the country finally in July, 1758. Catherine’s daughter, the Grand Duchess Anna, born in December, 1757, was Poniatovsky’s child. The infant was taken from the mother by the Empress just as the first one had been and put into the nursery with her three-year-old half-brother. She did not long survive under the Empress’s régime and seems to have been soon forgotten by her mother and her father. The life and death of the little Grand Duchess Anna, wafted so carelessly in and out of her mother’s career, was the slightest of slight episodes. Catherine was absorbed in political intrigue. Her alliance with Chevalier Williams and Grand Chancellor Bestushev had developed her talents in this direction, and she allowed herself to go far and to take great risks. She saw the death of the Empress approaching and the accession of Grand Duke Peter to the throne. What would then be her position and that of her son by Saltikov?

A midnight encounter which took place between Poniatovsky and the Grand Duke at Oranienbaum caused the Pole to leave Russia and showed Catherine how desperately uncertain her footing had become. The Count was accustomed to come and go in disguise. Wearing a blond peruke he would say, “Musician of the Grand Duke” and would pass unquestioned. But one mid-summer night his ruse failed to save him from embarrassing developments. Poniatovsky tells the story thus: “On this night I met unluckily in the woods at Oranienbaum the Grand Duke and his whole retinue, all of them half drunk. They asked my _izvostchik_ whom he was driving. My page replied, ‘A tailor.’ We were allowed to pass. But Elisabeth Vorontsov, lady-in-waiting of the Grand Duchess and mistress of the Grand Duke, who was present, made a few joking remarks about the alleged tailor which put the Grand Duke into a bad humor. As I was leaving the pavilion where I had spent several hours with the Grand Duchess and which she occupied under the pretense of taking a water-cure, I was suddenly stopped, after taking a few steps, by three mounted men, who, sabres in hand, seized me by the collar and dragged me before the Grand Duke.”

According to Catherine’s story, Brockdorf the pelican played a prominent part in this scene. The Holsteiner advised the Grand Duke to kill the prisoner. But Peter had no such intention; he only exposed and ventilated the scandal. Poniatovsky was allowed to go free after the episode had become known to the entire court. With broad patronizing jokes, the Grand Duke invited the Pole to Oranienbaum and facilitated his meetings with the Grand Duchess. The Shuvalov tried to reassure the Count, but neither Catherine nor her lover were reassured. “I could not but remark,” says Poniatovsky, “that all was not clear and that it was time for me to go away.” Catherine says that she perceived through this episode that her lot was finally separated from that of the Grand Duke; that she must either perish with him and through him or save herself and her children and the state from shipwreck. After Poniatovsky’s departure for Poland, the Grand Duchess went into strict retirement. Soon after he left, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams left Russia also. The Chevalier was strangely reluctant to go away. He should have gone early in the summer, but he could not decide on his itinerary. At first he planned to journey through Poland but changed his mind and decided to go through Sweden. He got as far as Finland and then came back again saying that his horses had fallen ill. Again he hesitated and it was not until the end of October that he finally took leave of Catherine at Oranienbaum. She was extremely depressed by his leaving and wept the whole day when he came to say farewell. The separation seems to have added the last straw to the Chevalier’s unstable mental condition. After a stormy passage from Kronstadt, he arrived in Hamburg already a sick man, and almost immediately he was declared insane by the physicians and taken to England. A year later he ended his life by suicide and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Two months after his death, Catherine wrote to the Russian envoy in Warsaw the following confidential message: “Count Poniatovsky is out of humor with me, but he is wrong if he believes that obstacles or other incidents can detach me from him. I put my profession of faith into your hands, and I desire only the moment of our reunion; I wish he would place himself above all vulgar trifles. There is so much complexity in my present rôle that I have need of that enthusiasm which he pretends I sometimes inspire. Adversity shall not conquer me and if it is necessary to triumph, courage will not be lacking. I esteem and love Poniatovsky above all the rest of the human race. He must be sure of that, and if I have good fortune events will prove it. In the name of God, do not remind your hearer [Poniatovsky] of the scene with the late Williams who, while haranguing me began to sob; you will picture me inspiring you with courage and the surface will be smiling....”

These cryptic messages indicate that the relationship between Catherine and Williams was more emotional than the political situation required. The complexity of her rôle in January, 1761, the last year of Empress Elisabeth’s life, took all of her attention. During this winter especially she strove to ingratiate herself with the Russian public, possibly because she realized that her recent intimacy with foreigners tended to recall the fact that she herself was not a Russian. Her assurances of affection for Poniatovsky were still sincere at this time for his successor did not arrive in Petersburg until the following March. It was not wholly accidental that her new lover was a Russian.

6

The part which the Grand Duchess Catherine played in the Seven Years’ War was devious if not exactly traitorous. In the spring of 1757, the Russian army advanced against Frederick the Great, the “blasphemous Prince” whom Elisabeth Petrovna so cordially detested. Austria and France breathed a sigh of relief to see their ally at last in motion. But General Apraxin, in charge of the Russian forces, got into the fight with extreme deliberation. He captured Memel and Grossjägerndorf, and then, to the astonishment of all the world, began a most unaccountable and hasty retreat toward the Russian border. Petersburg buzzed with excitement. The French and Austrian ambassadors demanded an investigation, which the outraged Empress was prompt in ordering. Before the eyes of Europe, her armies had let down her allies. Apraxin’s only excuse for his retreat was that he was too far away from provisions.

In the investigation which followed all clues seemed to lead mysteriously to the Grand Duchess but none of them ever quite reached her. Bestushev was arrested and subjected to an inquisition which lasted intermittently for a year. Nearly all the questions put to him by the commissioners related in some way to Catherine. In the end, still without having incriminated her, he was sent into exile. Adadurov, Catherine’s old teacher, and several other subordinates who had been confidential messengers between Bestushev and herself, were also arrested, investigated, and banished to remote parts of Russia.

Finally Apraxin, the star culprit in this historical affair, was recalled from the army and arrested on the border as he entered Russia. A court of inquiry was set up on the spot and the General was subjected to a trial which carried on into the summer. On the first of August his ordeal was brought to an unexpected close. He suffered a stroke of paralysis and died in twenty-four hours. Like Bestushev, he had not incriminated the Grand Duchess seriously, even though he had in his possession several letters written by her to himself. These letters were taken from him by Count Alexander Shuvalov, the man with the grimace which Catherine had so often ridiculed, and were safely carried back to the Empress Elisabeth. Except for the fact that the Grand Duchess was not allowed to write letters at all, there was nothing incriminating in this correspondence.

No real evidence ever came out against her. Bestushev had found time to destroy all his documents before he was arrested and Catherine, on hearing of his arrest, destroyed every scrap of written paper in her possession. She made a clean sweep of everything. An innocent sketch of herself, written at the age of fifteen, was sacrificed with the rest, a loss which she always regretted. We must assume that she felt that there was no time to lose. All her closest friends and associates were tried and convicted. She alone survived the crisis without serious consequences.

The historian Bilbassov was able to prove to his own complete satisfaction by the total absence of documentary evidence, that the Grand Duchess Catherine, throughout the whole shady Apraxin business, never once wavered in her loyalty to Russia. Her correspondence with Chevalier Williams, however, indicates that she played with fire at this time and was only saved from the charge of treason by her amazing instinct for self-preservation. Believing the Empress to be on the verge of death--and apparently the infatuated Williams helped her to be over-confident about the near gratification of this wish--she realized that the Grand Duke Peter would in that event instantly reverse any attack on Frederick the Great. Hoping for the Empress’s death and encouraged by a fit that the unfortunate lady one day had in public, she schemed to hold Apraxin back from the German campaign. Just what she did to cause the General to turn in his tracks as he did and when he did is a fact not knowable to history since Catherine burned up all her papers. But if the Russian general on this occasion betrayed his Empress and his country, the Grand Duchess was without doubt one of the influences which led him into this serious and fatal mistake.

There came at last a dramatic midnight scene in which the Grand Duchess faced the Empress and saved herself once for all. After the arrest of Bestushev, she spent many weeks in an agony of suspense. At last she wrote a letter to the Empress asking for an interview, and waited for an answer six weeks longer. By this time she was actually and literally walking the floor, a symptom which belies the good conscience which Bilbassov would have us believe she enjoyed at this crucial time. By pretending to be sick and calling in her father confessor, who interceded on her behalf, she managed at last to induce the Empress to receive her. Her courage and resourcefulness throughout this crisis prove that her famous boast of intrepidity made to impress Poniatovsky in the presence of the French Ambassador was not an empty one.

The Empress, who habitually turned night into day, summoned her to an audience at half-past one in the morning. Alexander Shuvalov, grimacing, came to call her. Catherine pictures for us with brief strokes the room in which she was received by the Empress: the three windows, the wash-stand with gold utensils, the tall screen, and, behind the screen, the favorite of the Empress and the defender of the political interests of France--Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov. In the gold wash-basin she saw the crumpled letters which she had written to Apraxin, a detail which gives us by the way a picture of how the Empress Elisabeth respected important documents. When Catherine arrived in this room, she found the Grand Duke already there before her. In his presence, in that of Alexander Shuvalov, and in that of the hidden Ivan Ivanovich,--a solid trio of her enemies--she was obliged to defend herself. The manner in which she rose to the occasion shows that the woman loved danger; she ate it like cake.

She began by throwing herself at the Empress’s feet and asking to be sent home to her mother. Elisabeth reminded her that she had children in Russia; Catherine replied that the Empress was a better mother to them than she herself could possibly be. Elisabeth further reminded her that the Princess of Zerbst had fled to Paris; Catherine replied that her mother had been driven out of Germany by the persecutions of Frederick the Great, the enemy whom Elisabeth hated. What chance had a mere emotional Empress against astuteness like this? Elisabeth fell back upon her real grievance.

“You are immoderately proud. Do you remember one day in the summer garden when I came up to you and asked you if you had a crick in your neck because you scarcely greeted me?”

“Ah, my God. How could Your Majesty believe that I could be proud toward you? I swear to you that I had not the least idea that your question of four years ago signified that.”

“You fancy that nobody alive is as clever as yourself.”

“If I really believed this of myself, then my present situation and this conversation seem best designed to cure me of my error: until this very day, I have not understood, out of mere stupidity, what you wished to say to me four years ago....”

At this point the Grand Duke began to talk with Alexander Shuvalov in the background, taking sides against Catherine. For a moment the two women allowed the Grand Duke to enter the quarrel, and then excluded him again. He was not really worthy to close with either of them in combat. The Empress brushed him aside and returned to the attack.

“You mix into all kinds of matters which do not concern you. During the Empress Anna’s time, I was not allowed to do that. How could you, for example, have the audacity to issue commands to Field Marshal Apraxin?”

“I? It never once entered my head to issue commands to him.”

“Can you deny that you have written to him? Your letters lie there in the basin....”

The Grand Duchess knew full well that there was nothing in the letters which Alexander Shuvalov had travelled so far to bring home to the Empress. She rehearsed their contents now.

“Bestushev says,” Elisabeth persisted, “that there were many more letters.”

“If Bestushev says that, he lies.”

“Good. If he lies, he shall be put to torture.”