Part 14

When a fire broke out in the city, it was a glorious spectacle. During the first winter of her reign, the Empress watched from her window two hundred and forty wooden houses going up in flames. As the sparks ascended from the roaring logs against the blackness of the winter sky, she watched the disaster with mixed feelings, for she yearned to rebuild that quarter of the city anyhow. Within three years it was actually rebuilt of brick. Several great fires devastated the city during the early part of her reign and the Empress restored the ravaged sections with brick and stucco washed pink and green by Italian architects. First raised by Peter the Great and developed by Catherine the Great, Petersburg was and remains for all time a wholly un-Russian city, a fitting monument to these two rulers who joined Europe and Russia together.

Though Catherine the Second prided herself on being a Russian she cherished a private scorn for much that was precious to the Russians. Her honest opinion of Moscow, set down in her journal, shows this. “At that time [1750], even more than now, it was in general very hard for the nobility to leave Moscow, the city which they all so loved, where laziness and indolence are their chief occupation. They would gladly spend their whole lives there, driving about in a richly gilded carriage behind six spans of horses, a symbol of the false idea of luxury which reigns there and conceals from the eyes of the masses the slovenliness of the master, the complete disorganization of his household and his manner of life. It is no rarity to see a splendidly gowned lady in a wonderful carriage with six lean and shabbily harnessed horses drive out from a great courtyard heaped with dirt and trash. Her unkempt lackeys in pretty livery disgrace her by their boorish behavior. Generally speaking, both men and women grow soft in this great city: they see and practice only wretchedness, which leaves the most undoubted genius to perish and decay. Because they follow their humors and their whims, they evade all laws and execute them badly. The consequence is that they never learn to command at all or that they become tyrants.... Besides this there was never a people who had more objects of fanaticism before their eyes, such as wonder-working saints at every step; churches, parsons, cloisters, praying brothers, rascals, thieves, useless servants in their houses--and such houses! What dirt in those houses, which occupy whole fields and have mudholes for courtyards. In general every person of fashion in the city occupies not a house but a small farm.” The Empress complained that if she sent for a person in Moscow, she had to wait until the next day for her answer. The Muscovites had time. The Muscovites were Russians.

Although Catherine was free in her criticism of the Moscow nobles, her own court at Petersburg was just as extravagant and ostentatious though possibly more orderly and cleanly withal. Both gentlemen and ladies wore jewels and diamonds. Gregory Orlov, at the height of his fortunes, had a suit of clothes which cost a million rubles and which was sewed all over with diamonds. Orlov’s extravagance was mild compared with that of his successor, Potiomkin, who was clearly obliged to outshine the achievements of his predecessor. Historians have estimated what the Empress spent on the clothes and upkeep of her several favorites and how much she turned over to them in the form of estates and other valuable goods and have found the total shocking. In this she seems to have but continued the tradition of Elisabeth who gave the Anitchkov Palace to Razumovsky and a handful of national monopolies to the Shuvalovs. All the nobles about the court had inherited lavish standards from Peter the Great and the favorites of the Empress could not possibly be outshone by Sheremetiev and Stroganov who were counts and rich men by inheritance. Catherine’s favorites were parvenus; they owed every copeck to her. She always saw to that. The Empress herself was a parvenu; but the nobles of Moscow were not. In the palaces there with their miry courtyards dwelt the ancient blood of Russia. While the Empress criticized their dirt and ostentation, she knew that from the point of view of Moscow she herself was a parvenu and her favorites were but creatures of yesterday.

2

Up to the time of Catherine the Second, the Czars of Russia had been addressed by the European courts as “Your Majesty.” As soon as the Empress was crowned at Moscow, she notified the sovereigns of Europe that she expected in the future to be addressed as “Your Imperial Majesty.” Her request was granted except in France, which had the consciousness of being the most civilized country in the world and was bound to regard Russia as a savage interloper. France would gladly have pushed the big, unwieldy, dirty chaos known as Russia back into the arms of Asia. The French maintained that “Czar” did not mean the same as “Emperor” at all. But Catherine said the two titles were exactly the same, and insisted that “His Most Christian Majesty” of France should always address her as “Her Imperial Majesty” of Russia. At last the French minister, Choiseul, agreed. Then he sent official communications to Russia in which the word “Imperial” did not appear. Catherine refused to read them or to recognize an envoy who carried papers addressed merely to “Her Majesty.” Pushed into a corner, Choiseul finally declared that “Imperial Majesty” was impure French, a corruption of the sacred language which the French Academy existed to protect. The argument between Versailles and Petersburg spun itself out for years.

Like a good and faithful wife, Madame de Choiseul joined in the quarrel and went about calling the Empress of Russia a “monster.” It was this lady who provoked from Voltaire his famous words in defense of Catherine the Great. “I may boast to you that I stand rather in the good graces of the Empress; I am her knight toward and against all. I know well that she is reproached for several trifles towards her husband. Those are family matters in which I do not mix. Moreover it is also well if one has a wrong to make good. Then it becomes one’s first interest to make great efforts to win for oneself the respect and admiration of the public. Certainly her dreadful husband would not have accomplished one of the things which my Catherine accomplishes every day.”

Catherine the Second was her own foreign minister. The men whom she placed at the head of the College of Foreign Affairs were followers not leaders. When she ascended the throne, she knew more about the international relations of Europe than she did about the internal affairs of Russia. She was to learn about Russia after she became its Empress. In 1762, the alignment of the European nations had been thrown into high relief by the warlike activities of Frederick the Great. International problems were perfectly familiar to her. Her opinion was formed and she was ready to take action. Catherine had been inspired by Machiavelli’s “Prince,” which she had read during the Poniatovsky period when she had intrigues for power with Sir Charles Hanbury Williams for an ally.

In his monumental work on Catherine the Great, Bilbassov devotes a chapter to a detailed account of the reading of the Grand Duchess during the years of her virtual imprisonment by the Empress Elisabeth, and emphasizes the influence which her favorite authors had on her subsequent career as Empress. Bilbassov found on her table Voltaire, Montesquieu, Tacitus, Boyle; in short, a collection of free thinkers who might be expected to form the mind of a future liberal monarch. Catherine read all of these, but she also read Machiavelli, whose name is not mentioned by Bilbassov in his carefully prepared chapter on her reading. In one of her letters to Chevalier Williams, she quotes a maxim of Machiavelli to the effect that a man is rarely as wicked as he ought to be. Williams was a little shocked apparently, for he replied, “What I say is, thank God, the wicked rarely have the courage which they ought to have to execute their wickedness.” To which Catherine replied coolly, “So much the better, if le bon Dieu has curtailed the courage of the wicked for the execution of their wickedness.”

The foreign policy of this Empress was uniformly aggressive. In her domestic policies, her intentions were at least liberal, but all her dealings with foreign nations were astute and predatory. The trail of Machiavelli was over all. She worked for the expansion of Russia and boasted as an old woman of the number of square miles which she had added to her territory. Russia was a parvenu and she was a parvenu; their cause was one. Europe should be astonished, and it was astonished. It responded by calling her the Semiramis and Messalina of the North and Catherine the Great. In these high-sounding titles, she exulted and her personality settled into them as her body settled comfortably into its ermine robe.

3

When the squire falls heir to wide ancestral acres, his first thought is for his boundaries and his fences. So it was with Catherine when she fell heir to Russia. Courland was entrusted to Biron, the decrepit old Duke ruled by his daughters and devoted to Catherine. Thus the Empress secured this boundary well and could henceforth dismiss it safely from her mind. She next considered her own border provinces and found them too restless for her taste. Little Russia, Livonia, and Finland needed to be stabilized and she wrote to Viazemsky recommending treatment to that end. “These provinces, like that of Smolensk, must be induced in the gentlest manner to Russify themselves, so that they no longer look around them like wolves in the forest.”

To Poland she gave her own personal attention. Catherine’s name plays a great rôle in the history of that country as one of the originators of the historical looting party known as the partition of Poland. Three monarchs shared the booty: Catherine of Russia, Frederick of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Maria Theresa is the only one of the three who has never been accused of inventing the idea. Since Catherine herself exonerated the Austrian Empress in a letter which she wrote to Grimm in 1770, Maria Theresa’s lack of responsibility for the crime in Poland seems sufficiently established. “As far as the dear worthy Lady Prayerful is concerned,” wrote the Russian Empress, “I can say nothing more than that she suffers from severe attacks of covetousness and imperiousness. To weep is a sign of repentance, but since she always holds fast to what she has and quite forgets that not to do a thing again is the best kind of repentance, there must be something stubborn in her bosom. I fear it must be the original sin of Adam which plays this crazy comedy. But what does one ask more from such a woman? If she is faithful to her husband, she has all the virtues and needs nothing more.” Maria Theresa’s retaliation was to speak of the Empress of Russia as “cette femme” and talk about her openly as a loose woman. Notwithstanding this exchange of personal insults, they coöperated willingly in the seizure of Polish territory.

The exact part played by Frederick the Great in the partition of Poland has never been so clearly established. It is an embarrassing episode for the Prussian historian to explain. To assert, as Schlözer does, that Frederick only gradually and reluctantly consented is an attempt to whitewash the hero in a way which makes him slightly unheroic. To ascribe the initiative to the Russian Empress is to place the great Frederick in a secondary position which is inconsistent with the invincible front he has always presented to history. Nevertheless the actual idea, that is, the execution of the idea seems to have occurred first of all to Catherine. The expectation of the disaster had long existed in Poland, which had been forewarned a century before by one of its Kings, Jan Casimir, who said that one day the thing would happen just as it actually did happen. The dismemberment of Poland had been seen as a possibility by all the international politicians of Europe for more than a century before it became a definite picture in the mind of Catherine the Second. She alone had the energizing image that leads to action, and was undoubtedly responsible for the first Partition of Poland, although Frederick the Great shared the guilt for the second and third partitions which followed logically on the first.

The steps by which Catherine came to this decision are not difficult to trace. Soon after her accession to the Russian throne, the King of Poland lay down to die. After a series of false alarms, he actually did die in September, 1763. The King of Prussia and the Empress of Russia, who had been misled so often by false reports, were both upset by the event when it finally occurred. Frederick sprang up from the table with the remark, “I hate those people who always do things at the wrong time.” Catherine also sprang from her chair when the news came, galvanized for action. She had hoped for it so long. Her long deferred plans to make Stanislas Poniatovsky King of Poland required instant attention. She had already instructed her Ambassador, Count Kayserling, concerning his duties in the present crisis. He had in fact been selected for the post with this event in view. “I am sending Count Kayserling without delay as Ambassador to Poland,” she had written to Poniatovsky, “in order to make you King after the death of August III. If my Ambassador is not successful in making you King, then I desire that Adam Czartorisky shall become King.”

Adam Czartorisky was the uncle of Stanislas, a representative of the same family, and was also devoted to the Empress of Russia. Catherine was willing to allow Poland a second choice from this family. This did not mean, however, that she strove any less efficiently and determinedly to place the handsome Stanislas upon the throne. She told Kayserling that if he could not manage it for less to spend as much as a hundred thousand rubles on the election. Nor did she put her faith in the influence of money alone. Russian regiments were marched into Poland to camp ominously near the electoral convocation. The Empress wished, however, to avoid bloodshed. She preferred to enlist the aid and influence of the Prussian King in order that Poland might feel its eastern and western neighbors closing in upon its existence like a gentle but inevitable vise.

Catherine gave presents quite unblushingly. No sooner was the Polish King dead than couriers with messages and gifts began to enliven the road from Petersburg to Berlin. Knowing Frederick for a _Feinschmecker_, Catherine sent him melons from Astrakhan and grapes from the Crimea. Frederick gallantly replied, “There is a great distance between watermelons from Astrakhan and the electoral assembly of the Polish provinces, but you know how to comprehend all in the sphere of your activity. The same hand which presents watermelons distributes crowns and preserves the peace in Europe, for which I and all who are interested in the affairs of Poland shall eternally bless you.” Catherine’s gifts continued. Russian caviar and sterlet were followed by Russian furs, black fox and marten. And finally, when Frederick expressed an interest in the dromedaries so commonly used by the peasants in Russia, the Empress had two of the best animals to be found in Ukrainia sent with her compliments to the master of Sans Souci. As the first watermelons had been heralds of Poniatovsky as King, the dromedaries were harbingers of the first partition of Poland.

Not wholly unlike the late Czar of Russia, Poniatovsky was made King against his will. Catherine, the King-maker, forced this unwelcome distinction upon him. He believed and many others believed with him that Catherine intended, after making him ruler of Poland, to marry him and annex his country to her own. The Pforte of Turkey was one of those who suspected this to be the plan of the Russian Empress and who accordingly set about to defeat it. He opposed the election of Stanislas on the ground that he was not married. Poniatovsky’s family, the Czartoriskys, saw the logic of the Pforte’s objection and urged the Count, who had certainly reached a marriageable age, to choose a suitable consort. But Poniatovsky stubbornly refused to take the fatal step. The utmost that he would consent to do, and this was only after an emphatic message had arrived from Catherine at Petersburg, was to sign an undertaking that he would at least never marry any but a Roman Catholic. This promise quieted the Turkish opposition and the election was allowed to proceed. It took place by immemorial custom in the open field by a vote of voices. It was a fine day and there was no disorder. Poniatovsky wrote in his journal, “The election was perfectly unanimous and so tranquil that many ladies were out on the electoral field.” He became, at the age of thirty-two, King Stanislas August of Poland.

The country had vindicated its cherished republican system and enthroned an elected King. The courts of Europe hastened to send acknowledgments and congratulations. The last country to be heard from was Russia. As soon as Catherine had got her King elected with her military pickets and her hundred thousand ducats, she lost all interest in the Polish situation and left the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Panin, to send the flowers. “The thing seems incredible,” wrote the Prussian Ambassador to his master, “nevertheless I assure Your Majesty that this is so. The notification of Poniatovsky lay unanswered for six weeks on Panin’s well-known work-table.” This seemed amazing to Frederick the Great to whom promptness and system were fetiches. To Catherine such things were conveniences.

That Poniatovsky, a king in spite of himself, never thoroughly enjoyed his reign is only to be expected. His country was torn by internal dissensions, political and religious. The new King was a man who had been bullied all his life, first by his mother and then by his mistress; in short, a man of charm but no force. There was nothing within him with which to cope with the turbulent conditions of his realm. Catherine had a genius for reconciling what seemed to be opposites; but the Polish King, who had run away from his mother to his mistress and had then run away from his mistress to his mother again, could not hold two antagonistic interests in his mind at the same time. Poland was a cauldron of conflicts: district with district, status with status, religion with religion. Under Poniatovsky, the old familiar feuds blazed higher and higher. His health suffered and he was miserable. After three years of such devastating responsibility, he wrote to his Ambassador in Russia, “The last orders given by Prince Repnin [the Russian General] to introduce legislation for the dissidents [Greek Catholics] is a real thunderbolt for the country and for me personally. If it is still humanly possible, try to make the Empress see that the crown which she procured me will become for me a shirt of Nessus. I shall be burnt alive and my end will be frightful.”

Thus the King wailed on his comfortless throne, a gentle mouse trembling under three watchful pairs of eyes belonging to three of the most greedy monarchs of the century. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the three watchful pairs of eyes were trained upon each other and that they rather overlooked as negligible the victim cowering at the center of the stage. Maria Theresa, the Austrian widow who never laid aside her weeds; Frederick the Second, the shabby bachelor who wore patches on his clothes; and Catherine the Second, the parvenu sovereign who painted her face--the conjunction of these three arch aggressors boded no good for Poland, weakened as she was by incessant domestic tremors. Yet the catastrophe which had been gathering for years and which was inherent in the circumstances, was precipitated at last as if by an accident.

In the autumn of 1770, Catherine entertained a distinguished foreign guest. He was a short man with a stiff pompous carriage and a silent inexpressive demeanor. He had come to Petersburg rather reluctantly at the request of his brother who felt that any invitation from the Empress of Russia should be accepted and exploited. There was no knowing what might be hidden behind the advances of this woman. The stiff, silent guest whom she entertained this autumn was Prince Henry of Prussia, the brother of Frederick the Great. Prince Henry was almost as unsociable as his brother but he had a sharp eye and sensitive perceptions. He was ideally qualified to sniff around the wood-pile of the Russian monarch.

Catherine, who never lost an opportunity of displaying all her riches before this family, entertained Prince Henry regally. She installed him and his retinue in a palace facing the Alexander Nevsky monastery, an edifice so huge and magnificent that it was later converted from a residence into a school for imperial pages. The modest, unassuming Henry moved about with considerable discomfort in the rich and colorful setting which the hospitable Empress provided for him. His appearances were punctual and meticulous but it was impossible for anyone to look at him and fancy that he enjoyed the balls and masquerades which were given for his entertainment. The Russians did not like him and made fun of his solemnity and coldness. With the Empress, however, he got on extremely well. Their conversations were carried on at great length and an intellectual sympathy developed between them which led to a long and interesting correspondence. Prince Henry’s letters to the Empress do not contain the over-strained flattery with which his brother, Frederick the Great, always addressed her. There is evidence in their letters to show that Prince Henry of Prussia was one of the people of her own generation who understood this woman perfectly. In her old age, she turned against him violently, but he cherished no resentment against her. He respected Catherine sincerely, and was never afraid of her as the great Frederick always was, not because she was an Empress but because she was a woman.

Prince Henry stepped sedately through all the gorgeous festivities of a Russian Christmas and New Year in Petersburg. The Winter Palace had never been so gay at this season since Catherine had become Empress, for the visit of the Prussian Prince had provided an excuse to outdo anything she had ever done before. In January, just about the time when things began to quiet down a bit, a disturbing rumor came over the snows from Moscow. It was said that Maria Theresa had sent Austrian troops across the border to occupy a little piece, a very little piece of Poland. The Austrian monarch had ready her excuse but the Russian monarch did not think well of it. Neither of these august ladies ever gave the other the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Catherine dropped this casual remark in the presence of Prince Henry: “It seems that in this Poland, one has only to stoop and help one’s self.” Prince Henry regarded her words as a significant message for his brother to whom he reported them, adding, “Although this was only a chance pleasantry, it is certain that it was not said for nothing and I do not doubt that it will be very possible for you to profit by this occasion.”