Part 12

The conspiracy which the Grand Duchess had made during her intimacy with Poniatovsky and Williams had been more elaborate than the one in which she now engaged. In those days, three years before the Empress died, Catherine had had plenty of money--English money--at her command. She says herself that on the day of Elisabeth Petrovna’s death she was literally bankrupt; she had not sufficient credit to order herself a new dress for Christmas. “On this day,” she adds, naïvely regretting that she had not ordered it, “the Empress died, something which I had not been able to foresee.” Ten years afterward she still regretted the dress she had foregone.

In the year 1762, as Czarina, she found herself in the possession of an income. This time it was Russian money not English money at her disposal, and she had acquired other Russian resources as well. Formerly, Catherine’s confederates had been foreigners; this time there was no suspicion of foreign influence in her friendships. The five brothers Orlov were the center and the focus of her plans and there were enough of them to do most of the underground work needed in the barracks. Alexei, the eldest, was a tough-minded person who had some of Catherine’s own strength. Gregory, the second brother and her lover, famous for his good looks, was softer and more sensitive. There still remained Ivan, Feodor, and Vladimir, who moved under Alexei’s orders. It was a typical Russian brotherhood with Alexei as leader. The Orlovs all lived in the barracks where they quietly suborned the guards with gossip and money. Count Kyril Razumovsky, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Ismailov Regiment, had long been subservient to Catherine’s charm. He gave her no trouble and his military position was useful to her. One woman, the Countess Catherine Dashkov, who played a showy though rather a dummy rôle in the preparations and their execution, must be included among the inner circle of conspirators. They were all Russians of ancient Russian lineage, except Catherine herself, who liked to forget that she had German blood in her veins.

The Countess Dashkov occupies a prominent place in the history of Catherine’s revolution. Her memoirs were published as early as 1840 and were the first authoritative account to be circulated in Europe. In the stories which multiplied around her name during the nineteenth century she figures as an Amazon and a leader only second to Catherine the Great. She was actually not very important. Her age precluded that, for she was only nineteen when Catherine deposed Peter and ascended the throne. The Countess had a strategic value due to the fact that she was the sister of Elisabeth Vorontsov, Peter’s mistress. Her allegiance to Catherine’s party divided the Vorontsov family as Catherine wished to divide it. She was a possible source of information concerning the other camp but she was also a possible channel for leakage in the opposite direction. For this reason, Catherine tells us, she was not fully initiated in the secret plans of the Empress and the wholly devoted Orlovs. The Empress had a rendezvous with her Dashkov at which we may assume the nineteen-year-old Countess told all she knew without being told much in return. Catherine once wrote to her, to reassure her anxiety about a rendezvous, “As for your reputation, it is better established than that of the whole calendar of saints.” The scorn is a bit transparent. Peter III, with all his stupidity, put the case clearly enough when he said to Countess Dashkov, “My child, you would do well to recollect that it is much safer to deal with honest blockheads like your sister and myself than with great wits, who squeeze the juice out of the orange and then throw away the rind.” Catherine was not quite so egoistic as Peter made her out. She did not throw away the rind; she preserved it carefully. The Countess Dashkov enjoyed the patronage and protection of the great Empress all her life.

Another confederate of the Empress in her conspiracy was Nikita Ivanovich Panin, the governor of her son. Panin had lived fourteen years in Stockholm as Russian Ambassador. There he had imbibed the concepts of liberalism and had formed a vague picture of Russia as a constitutional monarchy. Panin’s critics say that he did not sufficiently realize the political differences between a compact little country like Sweden, with its one blood and one faith, and the vast empire of Russia with its conglomerate races and cultures and religions. To his delight, Panin found, on his return to Russia when he was recalled to educate the infant Paul, that the Grand Duchess Catherine had also imbibed the new ideas from her diligent reading of French authors. Panin took hope for the future of his country when a liberal Empress would be in a position of power. This powerful position he pictured in a special way. Like other observers about the court, he perceived the tragic impossibilities of Peter as Czar and imagined that in some way he would have to be supplanted. Panin’s solution of the future, however, was to elevate Paul as actual emperor and Paul’s mother as Regent. He wished to establish a régime like that which Elisabeth Petrovna had overturned, that of Ivanushka and his surly mother, Anna Leopoldovna. Panin prepared elaborate schemes to this end, some of which he put on paper. The Grand Duchess, prior to 1762, read his plans with interest. After 1762, she declared that she had never really agreed to them.

4

On the night of the 27th of June, 1762, the Imperial family was more than usually divided, although the morrow was to usher in the celebration of the Emperor’s name-day. Peter Feodorovich slept at Oranienbaum; Catherine Alexeievna slept at Peterhof; and the little Grand Duke slept in the Summer Palace at Petersburg in the care of Nikita Panin. It was planned that the Czar and his retinue would drive over the next morning from Oranienbaum to Peterhof where the usual name-day celebration would take place. Catherine, unattended except by a maid, waited at Peterhof for her husband and his gay party to come over from Oranienbaum and enliven the place.

She slept that night in the little red brick pavilion known as Monplaisir. Her bedroom opened upon a terrace lapped by the waves of the blue Finnish Gulf. It was a doll’s house built by Peter the Great, whose head almost touched the ceilings, crowded as close down to the sea as he could crowd it. The Empress Elisabeth loved Monplaisir for her father’s sake and because she had a kitchen there where she herself could cook. The big Czar and his tall daughter have left their memories about this pavilion at Peterhof. But Catherine the Great, who spent the most dramatic hours of her life there--hours which were to make her the Empress of Russia--never liked the place. As an old woman she used to say that she hated the noise its fountains made and that her dog hated the gurgle of those fountains too. She would never spend any money in developing and beautifying the premises after they came into her possession.

On this particular night in June, 1762, the fountains were still, awaiting the coming of the Czar on the morrow when they would play. In the pale light, the gilded statues shone on the terraces leading down to the sea. At six o’clock in the morning a man came stealing through the park, skirted the main palace, and made his way down to the pavilion at the water’s edge. He wore the uniform of a Captain in the Preobrazhensky Regiment and he seemed to know where he was going. A French window opened into the Empress’s bedroom. He stepped inside. Catherine was sleeping in a broad silken bed alone. “Matushka, little Mother, wake up,” he said. “The time has come.” The man was Captain Alexei Orlov, the brother of Gregory Orlov, Catherine’s lover.

The night before had been a restless one in the city of Petersburg. The army had been mobilized for the campaign against Denmark and the General, Prince George of Holstein, was ready to march as soon as the celebration at Peterhof should release the Emperor to accompany them. The war was unpopular and the soldiers grumbled. They did not like their German commander and they did not like their uniforms. Nevertheless they stood ready to go; it was the Czar’s orders. Late in the evening the news went round that Captain Passeck had been arrested: again the Czar’s orders. The report was passed indifferently enough from person to person until it reached Alexei Orlov. Immediately the five Orlov brothers were all in action. Captain Passeck was the boon companion of Alexei and was one of the forty officers who had been sworn into the conspiracy. Arrest was likely to be followed by torture and Captain Passeck’s secrets were not secrets which could be told to the inquisitors of Peter III. So Alexei evidently thought, for he hired an ordinary carriage from the street, took with him Lieutenant Bibikov, and drove out to Peterhof. It was midnight when they left the city, and it was six o’clock when Captain Orlov entered Catherine’s bedroom and awakened her.

Her festival dress was laid out ready for the day; but she did not put it on. She donned instead the black mourning gown which she had taken off the night before. Together with Orlov and her maid she passed out through the park on foot, for the carriage had been left standing in the road outside the grounds. They were half an hour in reaching it. Catherine and her maid seated themselves in the carriage, Bibikov stood up in the back and Orlov sat on the box with the driver. The hack horses turned their faces towards Petersburg. They had travelled their twenty-nine versts that night, and had now to trace the same distance back again. Nevertheless, urged on by Alexei Orlov, they covered the distance in less than an hour and a half. The white dust from the roadway rose in clouds and settled on the black garments of the Empress, for the carriage was an open _calèche_. About half-way to the city they met Catherine’s hairdresser on his way to Peterhof to prepare her for the gala day. The Empress sent him back telling him she would not need him. About five versts from the city, they met Gregory Orlov and Prince Bariatinsky. The Empress changed to Gregory’s carriage because his horses were fresher. Escorted by her lover and Bariatinsky she drove up to the Ismailov Regiment. It was the regiment of Count Kyril Razumovsky, who had long been in love with her as a Grand Duchess and had assisted all her projects in Russia.

An old priest was found to administer the oath of allegiance, while the whole regiment headed by Razumovsky hastened to swear fealty to Catherine II of Russia. The Empress got into her hired carriage again and, preceded by the priest and followed by the regiment, went on to the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Here the oath of allegiance was again hastily administered and the augmented procession moved forward to the Nevsky Prospect. The third regiment, the Semionovsky, suffered a moment of indecision, but they too were in line by the time the procession reached the Kazan Cathedral. It was now nine o’clock. Catherine entered the Cathedral and was met by the priests who blessed her with the cross. The nobles crowded around the new Empress, competing with the military to kiss her hand. From the Cathedral the procession went on up the Nevsky Prospect and turned into the Morskaya, proceeding to the new Winter Palace.

At ten o’clock, just after the Empress entered the palace, another hired carriage was seen dashing up to the entrance. A fat man and a little boy in his night clothes were sitting inside. It was Panin and the Grand Duke Paul, and this was their first appearance on that stirring June morning. They had slept late. Count Panin had always been dilatory, unready. It is said of him that the Empress Elisabeth had once cast her eye upon him as a likely favorite. She summoned him one day to wait for her outside the bath; but when she emerged she found him crumpled on his chair fast asleep. So she decided to employ him in the diplomatic service. On the morning of Catherine’s accession, after fourteen years of international diplomacy, Count Panin had not changed. When he entered the Winter Palace with his charge, the Empress came to meet them and carried the boy out on the balcony to present him as her heir. This was the end of Panin’s scheme to make Paul emperor, Paul’s mother the Regent, and himself Grand Chancellor. He remained always rather resentful about it and did not fail to hamper the ambitions of the Orlovs whenever he had a chance. Catherine said of him, “Count Panin was naturally indolent, and he had the art of making his indolence pass for calculating prudence.”

The doors of the Winter Palace were thrown wide open and anybody from the street could enter and kiss the hand of the new Empress. The palace was a gorgeous new building, only just completed, yet all the common soldiers were free to tramp through it and take the oath of allegiance to their Little Mother. It was a master stroke. “The least soldier of the guards,” Catherine wrote to Poniatovsky, “on seeing me said to himself: that is the work of my hands.” Other master strokes of the Empress were the fluent manifestoes which she composed from time to time during the following days, to be set up and printed in the cellar beneath the Academy of Science and distributed to a people who could not read them. In 1762, few of the nobles could read. Fortunately the manifestoes were carefully preserved in the archives for the enjoyment of a more literate age.

The first one drafted by her facile hand read thus: “We by the Grace of God, Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, etc., etc., All true sons of the Russian Fatherland have clearly seen the danger which threatened the Russian Empire. Namely, the law of our Orthodox Greek Church has been shaken by the disregard of ecclesiastical traditions, so that our ancient Orthodox Church in Russia was exposed to the extreme danger of being obliged to adopt another confession. Secondly, our glorious Russia, which has been lifted to a high degree by its conquering weapons, has been placed in complete subjection to its bitterest enemy by the new peace for which so much blood has been spilt, while the inner organization of the country, on which the whole Fatherland depends, lies in ruins. Therefore and because we are convinced of the danger to our faithful subjects, we have seen Ourselves obliged with the help of God and his Justice, but especially in response to the distinct and undissimulated wish of Our faithful subjects, to ascend the throne as Autocrat of all the Russias, whereupon all Our faithful subjects have taken the solemn oath of allegiance to Us.

CATHERINE.”

During the day the Empress and her counsellors decided that a military campaign to Peterhof was necessary. The object was to secure the person of Peter III and obtain his abnegation of the throne. As Brückner well points out, the so-called army which Catherine II led to Peterhof was partly a spectacular, romantic parade and partly an exhibition of political genius.

At ten o’clock in the clear light of the evening of June 28, 1762, the Colonel of the Guard--Catherine herself--took her place at the head of her troops. She was mounted on a white horse and wore oak leaves in her hair. Her uniform was borrowed from a lieutenant in the Life Guards. It was doubtless chosen because the lieutenant and the Empress happened to be of a size, but it scarcely clothed her new position and title. For Catherine had not hesitated to assume the title Colonel of the Guards, the traditional place of the Czars of Russia which Peter had resigned to his Uncle George of Holstein. Beside her at the head of the troops, likewise clad in military uniform, rode the Countess Catherine Dashkov. During the night she remained beside the Empress, while her sister, Elisabeth Vorontsov, stuck close to the Emperor. There was deep jealousy between the sisters.

Catherine II left the following note, written in her own strong free flowing hand: “Gentlemen and Senators! I go now with the Army to secure and safeguard the throne, and leave in your care as my highest representatives with the fullest confidence the Fatherland, the People, and my Son.

CATHERINE.”

The Senate solemnly responded in a note which overtook the Empress at two o’clock in the morning, resting on her way to Peterhof: “His Highness, the Czarevich, is as well as could be desired. In the house of Your Imperial Majesty, as well as in the city, all goes well and the measures you have commanded are being carried out.”

Catherine bestrode her horse and rode onward to Peterhof. She had lived for this triumphant moment: little Fike riding her pillow in the dark bedroom at Stettin; Grand Duchess Catherine cantering about the courtyard in Petersburg while an admiring riding-master kissed her boot,--these earlier exhibitions had prepared the way for this spectacular ride at the head of her spectacular army. But it was her last showy ride. In the future, she would be too busy and perhaps a shade too serious.

5

Eight hours after Catherine and Alexei Orlov had left Peterhof, Peter and a gay party drove through the park and halted in front of Monplaisir. The ladies and gentlemen sprang from the low _chair-à-bancs_ and strolled about the terrace. No one came to welcome them. The red pavilion was empty and silent. Peter went through the rooms searching for Catherine in vain. It is said that he even looked under the bed. Mystified and vaguely alarmed the party wandered down to the pier where three small vessels were moored.

Here they received the first news of events in Petersburg. A man bringing the inevitable fire-works for the Czar’s name-day landed from a small boat at three o’clock. He told how the Preobrazhensky Regiment had hailed Catherine as Empress at nine o’clock that morning and how he had nevertheless just gone about his business of the day, which was to bring the fire-works to Peterhof. This seemed definite enough. Catherine had mutinied.

Peter was accompanied by Count Münnich, Prince Trubetsky, Chancellor Vorontsov, Count Shuvalov, several other nobles and officers, and about seventeen ladies. His old tutor, Stehlin, tells the story of this day. Throughout the sunny afternoon the party remained on the lower terrace. The ladies and gentlemen withdrew a little to the garden, where they lay stretched out under the open sky through most of the fine summer day and a part of the fine summer night. Peter and his advisers lingered near the canal and wrote one ukase after the other which the Czar signed against the stone balustrade and sent to Petersburg. He paced up and down the walk beside the canal and took everybody’s advice in turn. Finally Chancellor Vorontsov volunteered to go to Petersburg and bring the Empress to her senses. Then Shuvalov and Trubetsky departed on similar errands. But like the other less important messengers whom the Czar had already dispatched to the city, these gentlemen also did not return.

Peter’s fears increased. The Holstein Guards who had been sent over from Oranienbaum to defend Peterhof against attack reported that there was no ammunition in the place. Gradually, as the hours passed, a plan matured by which the whole party would go to Kronstadt in the three vessels which lay at anchor at the foot of the canal. A messenger was sent to the island and returned with the report that the way was clear. It was an error, as Peter learned when he tried to bring his yacht into the Kronstadt harbor at four o’clock in the morning. None of the three vessels was allowed to approach the island and the watchman called back brutally across the water, “There is no Peter III. There is only Catherine II.”

The Czar’s yacht fell away and took the course toward Oranienbaum. The Czar himself lay on the deck in a dead faint.

Early the next morning, forerunners from Catherine’s advancing army began to gallop up to Peterhof. First and foremost on the scene, at each stage of the developments, was Alexei Orlov. Quiet, undistinguished, inexorable, he was the Empress’s own man. The Colonel herself arrived at Peterhof at eleven o’clock. She sent messengers forward to Oranienbaum, demanding Peter’s abnegation, which the trembling Czar was by this time in no mood to refuse. General Ismailov brought back to the Empress the official document in which the Czar renounced all claims upon the throne.

It was General Ismailov who lured the ex-Emperor into a carriage with the promise that he would be sent to Holstein with Elisabeth Vorontsov. As soon as they had passed the gates of Oranienbaum, the Czar was separated from his favorite and brought as a prisoner to Peterhof. “To prevent him from being torn to pieces by the soldiers,” says Catherine, “he was put in the charge of a reliable guard under the command of Alexei Orlov.” From this time on Peter was at the mercy of his military guards; he never saw his mistress again. But the ghosts of his father, Brümmer and Bergholz, and all the tutors and governors who had tortured his childhood in the name of discipline, now crowded upon him with unspeakable terrors. Only now they bore the names of Alexei Orlov, Feodor Bariatinsky, and other Russian officers.

6

Peter was driven up to Peterhof in a closed carriage, with drawn curtains. He was taken into an empty room, stripped of his uniform, and left in utter solitude. At the other end of the palace, remote and invisible, sat the terrible Empress. From her came messengers from time to time, directing this and commanding that. One of the messengers was Count Panin, amiable, soft Panin. The Empress apparently wished to communicate with him through human agents as well as wolves like Alexei Orlov. But if Peter was a bleating lamb, Panin was a fat old sheep. His interview with the deposed Czar, in which the prisoner kissed his hand, alternately pleading and commanding, left a painful wound on a sensitive personality. Panin afterwards said that he considered it one of the greatest misfortunes of his life that he was obliged to see Peter III on this day. The memory haunted him and made him fearful on behalf of the little boy he was bringing up, Paul Petrovich, who believed himself to be the son of the martyred Czar.

The Empress allowed the prisoner to choose the place of his confinement. Peter chose Ropsha, a small estate with a large garden and a fishing pond not many miles from Peterhof. What the Empress really intended to do with Peter no one knows or ever knew, probably she herself least of all. But this is what she said she intended, though it was many years afterwards that she wrote it. “To go with Peter to Ropsha, the Empress named Alexei Orlov, Prince Bariatinsky, and several other officers. They chose a hundred men from the different regiments of the guard. They had orders to make the life of the monarch as agreeable as possible and to provide what he wished for his entertainment. The intention was to send him from there to Schlüsselburg and, according to circumstances, to allow him after some time to go with his favorites to Holstein. So little was his personality regarded as dangerous.”