Part 15

And so began the three famous Partitions of Poland. In the first partition, Poland lost four thousand square miles and the three partitioners felt equally well treated. Twenty years later, the second partition took place in which the Russian Empress profited immensely more than her partners in the looting. Poland raised up national heroes, chief of whom was the romantic Kosciuszko, who came to her defence. But their exploits only served as an excuse for the third invasion, which reduced Poland to a mere remnant, and finally and utterly deprived Poniatovsky of his throne.

For a time the ex-King lived in Poland under the protection of Russia and later he went back to Petersburg where he found asylum until his death. He outlived by several years the mistress of his youth, who had first given him a throne and then taken it away again. Poniatovsky was no hero but he was a good deal of a philosopher; he accepted his decline and fall without any great gestures of tragedy. He had never wanted to be King anyhow. His star went down in peaceful obscurity, while the national hero Kosciuszko impersonated for the world the tragedy of Poland. Both of them were supported by pensions from the Russian government. Catherine’s estimate of the ex-King of Poland is illustrated by a legend which is believed even to this day. The story goes that she brought his lost throne from Poland and used it for a water-closet in her apartment at Czarskoe Selo.

4

In the eighteenth century, Russia took her census every twenty years. It was an autocratic revision carried on in a slipshod way under military orders. When Catherine ascended the throne it was time for such a census to be taken. The new Empress was impatient for the results; she wanted to know how many souls she had and how much of the earth’s surface she owned, for it was in such personal terms as these that she pictured her possessions.

Returning from Moscow in June, 1763, just after the fiasco of her plan to marry Orlov, she turned her attention to the census. The Senate was preparing to go ahead according to precedent. Although Pastor Wagner had been a specialist in geography, his pupil the Empress was nevertheless very vague about Russia. She was obliged to ask the Senators to tell her how many cities there were in her kingdom and discovered to her horror that not one of them knew. Without a moment’s hesitation she took five rubles from her pocket and sent a messenger post haste to the Academy of Science which had published an atlas of Russia to be had for this price. The Empress presented the atlas to the Senate with her compliments.

The discussion of the census proceeded. Catherine learned that it was customarily taken by military troops and cost almost a million rubles, and that it invariably sent the peasant population into a panic. They evaded the lists by hiding in swamps and forests and fleeing across the border into Poland. The consequence was that trials, investigations, and punishments followed in the wake of every census in such numbers that the Senators dreaded to undertake the job at all. Sadly they shook their bewigged heads and deplored the necessity of causing so much commotion among the terror-stricken people. They made speeches one after the other without offering any suggestion as to how these regrettable consequences could be prevented. The attentive Empress listened until she was tired and the discussion finally came to a dead end. Then she asked a few questions.

“Why have such a number of troops and pile up these heavy costs for the treasury? Is there no other way?” She was told that there was no other way; it had always been done so. “But this plan seems better to me,” she persisted. “Publish throughout the Empire that every place shall send a list of its souls to its chancellery, the chancelleries to the governments, and the governments to the Senate.” Four Senators spoke up at once to tell her that it was impossible. The people would not report themselves voluntarily and a show of military force was therefore necessary. The Empress pursued her plan. “Offer to all those who have not yet registered freedom from punishment and order the local authorities to accept the former evaders upon the present list.” The elderly Prince Shakovsky sprang to his feet. “That is not justice,” he shouted. “The guilty shall be handled exactly like the innocent! I have always carefully reported from my district and no one has been omitted. But whoever has enjoyed the advantage of omissions will now stand just where I do!” But one of the younger Senators had got the Empress’s idea and came to her support so handsomely that the plan was adopted and carried into execution. Henceforth, the Empress’s method was always followed, with the result that migrations to Poland and outlawry in the woods and swamps which once followed every census gradually disappeared altogether.

Catherine left a memorandum of the worst internal tangles which she had to undo at the beginning of her reign. The army had been unpaid for many months. The taxes of the Empire had been mortgaged by the senate. There was a scarcity of currency; only a million gold rubles were in circulation in the whole empire. The Empress Elisabeth had handed over nearly every branch of business and all the mines of the country to monopolists, chief of whom were the Shuvalovs. At the time of Catherine’s accession, the peasants who worked in the mines were in revolt. The Empress regarded these monopolies with great disfavor and the rebellious peasants with even greater disfavor. Like the German _Hausfrau_ that she was, she enjoyed the wielding of a new broom and of giving the country a real spring cleaning. By hook or crook, she managed to pay the army; she restored the taxing power to the tax officers; she reformed the currency and introduced paper money into common use; she abolished at one stroke all monopolies and followed the example of Peter the Great in encouraging private business enterprise. Finally, she sent her colonels and her cannons down to the mines where strikes had broken out during the reign of the late Czar and bombarded the strikers so thoroughly that they were glad to seek safety in the mines again. Well satisfied with all these cleanings, she wiped her hands on her apron and sat down to her silk embroidery. She was working on a gorgeous robe, with stitches as delicate and perfect as the Chinese can make them, to be presented to the Archimandrite of the Troitsky monastery.

5

Catherine took considerable interest in the status of her sex and questions of morality. She once said that she did not know or understand women. She wrote to Madame Bjelke, “From my fifteenth to my thirty-third year, I never really had the opportunity to converse with women; I only had handmaidens about me. When I wished to speak with anyone, I had to go into another room where there were only men. So it is due partly to habit and partly to my taste that has been so formed that I really understand only how to carry on a conversation with the latter.” It is true that she had few women friends. The Princess Dashkov who had ridden beside her on the night of the Peterhof campaign was never really in her confidence. She was a lay figure. In old age, the Empress became more and more dependent on the friendship of Countess Bruce and Countess Protassov. But her intimacies, emotional and intellectual, of which there were many, were intimacies with men. She always had a free and jovial way with them.

The Empress initiated some reforms for her sex which foreshadowed typical aspects of the woman problem--a problem which was not really born until the next century. From this point of view, very significant are the steps which she took. Prostitution was a well-developed trade in the Petersburg of those days. In one quarter of the city girls of the town were especially numerous, and venereal disease flourished among them. It was a malady in which the Empress took a vast interest. Whether she herself had had an unfortunate experience or whether she merely remembered that Peter the Great had been prematurely carried off by it, the Empress was horribly afraid of this contagion. A well-authenticated story has it that each of her lovers was required to submit to a physical examination by her English physician, Rogerson. Nor did her interest stop entirely with herself. She built a fine hospital for the sufferers from this infection, of which Major Masson says: “One hospital, however, founded by Catherine deserves to be mentioned as a characteristic establishment. It is destined for the reception of fifty ladies infected with a certain disease. No question is asked either as to the name or the quality of those who present themselves, and they are treated with equal care, respect, and discretion. This last word is even marked on the linen appointed for their use.”

Another institution still remaining as a monument to Catherine’s reign was the great Foundling Hospital which she built on the banks of the Moscow. Lying against the river, it stands out as one of the most prominent features of the city next to the Kremlin. Its tradition has not faded, as it still houses the maternity welfare work of Moscow. The Empress made it originally a home for foundlings and planned it for the discouragement of infanticide. Her institution has the name of being the first of its kind which sprang up in Europe; at any rate, it was the most famous and served as a model for many which came afterwards. Not all of Catherine’s subjects were pleased with her innovation. A citizen named Smolin wrote a letter to express his discontent. He reproached her for these foundling homes which only served for the encouragement of immorality. Vice, he said, would show itself more openly and shamelessly as a result; more and more illegitimate children would be born. From this it may be seen that the Puritan ideal of the repression of vice did not lack representation even in Russia in the eighteenth century.

The Empress’s efforts to educate her sex met with more approval. A cloister known as the Smolny Convent and founded by Elisabeth Petrovna was taken over by Catherine and converted into a school for young ladies. She gave her personal attention to this experiment which was the pride of her heart. She wrote to Voltaire, “You know, for nothing escapes you, that five hundred young ladies are being educated in a house which was formerly designed for three hundred brides of heaven. These young ladies I confess far surpass our expectations. They make astonishing progress and every one admits that they are as lovable as they are knowledgeable. Their conduct is justly regarded as blameless without having at the same time the strict and stern manner of the cloister. For the last two winters they have begun to play comedies and tragedies, and they have done better with them than those who make a profession of acting.”

Proud as she is of these five hundred faultless damsels, there is one problem which troubles her. All the French plays including Voltaire’s own, which she can find for the school turn on the theme of love. What is to be done about it? She asks Voltaire’s advice. Catherine feels that her girls’ attention should not be called so early to the subject. Voltaire agrees and helpfully suggests that as far as his own plays are concerned the matter can be remedied. Ten lines here and twelve lines there, to be obligingly selected by the author, can be stricken out without damage to the composition and all the proprieties will be satisfied.

In a gallant sentence, he refers to the Smolny damsels as Amazons. The Empress rejects this title firmly, informing him that they are not intended to become Amazons at all but honest wives and mothers. It appears, however, that this admirable institution had overlooked the problem of dowries. After twelve years of careful cultivation, the young ladies emerged as paragons of virtue but entirely penniless and homeless. Many of them became governesses. Others still were snared by the officers of the guards whose barracks adjoined the convent. “They watched every term of dismissal,” says Major Masson, “to ensnare the prettiest. It would be more practical to save, out of the immense cost of their education, a sufficient sum to portion them or at least to keep them till they were provided for.” The Empress apparently did not foresee this difficulty. As penniless Princess Fike of Anhalt she had come to Russia and had got a husband without a dowry. The Smolny young ladies might do the same.

6

Although Catherine did not hesitate to follow self-interest in foreign relations, she took an idealistic view of her domestic problems. She turned from Machiavelli to Montesquieu. When she thought of Courland and Poland she pictured herself as a general on horseback; when she thought of Russia she pictured herself as the Little Mother, Matushka. She and Russia were united against the rest of the world.

The Empress wished to make her people happy without making herself unhappy. Russia had despotic, conflicting, chaotic laws. There was a printed code which had been handed down from Czar Alexei Michaelovich, the father of Peter the Great. But chiefly the people were ruled by ukases, of which Catherine’s Manifesto of Silence is a good example. Not always, however, did the Russians obey so promptly as they had done in this particular instance. It was commonly said of the peasants when some order had not been obeyed, “They are waiting for the third ukase.” During the reign of Elisabeth Petrovna, the Senate had discussed the need of codifying the laws but postponements had ensued and nothing had been accomplished. On the threshold of her reign, Catherine was met by this need. It was a task made to her hand.

She took the ancient code of Czar Alexei in one hand and Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws in the other. There seemed to be no way of reconciling the two; so she decided that she had better cleave to Montesquieu altogether. She worked three hours every day for more than three years and produced a thick volume. There was but little original thought in it as most of it had been adapted from her philosopher and guide. It was published under the title “Instruction of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine the Second for the Commission charged with preparing a project of a new code of laws.” It was more briefly known in Russian as the Nakaz.

She worked secretly, showing her book to no one but Panin and Orlov. Count Panin was delighted. The Empress was at last engaged on a plan in which he could whole-heartedly share, that of putting political and social ideals on paper. The Count cried out, while his huge peruke flopped to one side in his excitement, “These are principles which will cast down walls!” The handsome Gregory, lounging with his feet up, thought the literary efforts of his Empress would surely add to her already shining laurels. He wished to take the pages which she read to him and show them around to the whole court. But Matushka forbade him to do this.

In the summer of 1767 the work was at last finished. In December Catherine had sent out a ukase ordering the election of delegates for a legislative commission. During the spring, a time of great floods and freshets in Russia, the elections had taken place. There had been much groaning and protesting from districts afflicted by heavy rains, as the swollen streams made travel difficult and dangerous, but the new Empress ignored all excuses for delay and somehow or other the streams were forded. In early summer, the delegates began to arrive in Moscow, in kibitkas, on horseback, on foot. They represented cities, districts, social classes, religions, races. There were Russian nobles wearing laces, diamonds, and velvets made up in the latest Paris fashion; there were merchants and military men; there were a few peasants in smocks; there were Tartars and Bashkirs. Over a thousand delegates assembled.

Prior to the convention, the Empress sequestered herself in the Kolomenskoe Palace not far from Moscow. Here she gathered around her various thinking persons, as she called them, and asked them to criticize her manuscript. To meet their conflicting objections, she crossed out so much that only half of the Instruction was left. Collecting the remnant of her labors, she sent it to the printer, and then had it read before the legislative convention. As many of the delegates could not read, it was necessary that the Instruction should be read aloud frequently and fully. At first the delegates rose in a body at the first sound of Her Majesty’s words; but the document was read too often and too lengthily. Finally they just remained sitting or milled around according to their custom. Some English visitors who attended the convention called it a riot. Whether the meeting was really as tumultuous as the English Parliament can be on occasion is doubtful. But the Russian delegates wore so many gay, primitive colors, it probably seemed to Anglo-Saxon observers as if they expressed excitement and savagery in every way.

The legislative commission dragged on a year and a half. The first sessions took place in the Kremlin but shifted to Petersburg when the Empress returned to her northern residence. The commission like everything else in Russia accommodated easily to a nomadic life. In Catherine’s day, the court, which travelled continually back and forth between Petersburg and Moscow, took their furniture with them, for furniture was scarce and precious. To give a man _meuble_ from France was one of the best ways of bribing him. This was one of the lessons that Catherine had learned from the Empress Elisabeth.

When the Empress set forth for Petersburg in December, 1767, she had more people and more furniture than usual in her train. One thousand delegates were swept northward in flying sleighs and were reassembled in the Winter Palace after the Christmas festivities had been duly celebrated. In Petersburg as in the Kremlin, the Empress kept herself modestly in the background. She sat in a box behind a drawn curtain and left the commission entirely in the hands of a presidium composed of Viazemsky, Bibikov, and Shuvalov. Her General-Adjutant, Gregory Orlov, was prominent on the floor and on one occasion spoke up eloquently in defense of a peasant who had been called “lazy and stubborn” by a nobleman. The Empress was not officially present. She sent messages from her box to the presidium but did not appear on the floor. This made it possible for the convention to draw up formal addresses to the author of the Instruction and for her to reply in writing to them. In one of these addresses she was designated for the first time as “Catherine the Great.” She modestly replied that the title was one which she had not yet earned. Still the title clung and she was to enjoy it for many long years as she was not yet forty when the commission on laws bestowed it upon her.

The Instruction abounds in democratic ideas. It goes so far as to advocate the gradual abolition of serfdom in Russia by allowing the serfs to own property and to purchase their own freedom. But the Russian nobles were not in favor of the reform. Most of the plan was stricken out by her counsellors before the Instruction ever went to print and the remainder was eliminated by speeches in the convention. The Empress abandoned all propaganda for the abolition of serfdom for the rest of her life and consoled her conscience by abusing the Russian nobles in her memoirs. “What had I not to suffer from the voice of an irrational and cruel public opinion when this question was considered in the legislative commission. The mob of nobles, whose number was much greater than I had ever supposed because I had judged them too much by the people who daily surrounded me, began to suspect that these discussions might bring about an improvement in the position of the peasants.... I believe that there were not twenty human beings who reflected on the subject at that time with humanity, really like human beings!”

7

Catherine’s campaign against smallpox in Russia won great fame for her in Europe. It must be admitted that her step took courage in those days. The prevalence of the disease was such that everybody believed that everybody had to have it. For instance, the court spoke of the Grand Duke’s uncertain chance of life because he “had not yet had the smallpox.” The royal family had no more protection than the poorest peasant. The fiancé of Empress Elisabeth had been carried off by smallpox on the eve of his marriage and Peter the Second had died in early youth of the same disease. From the time of Catherine’s arrival in Russia she was constantly pursued by the fear of the pest and every time she fell ill she thought it had overtaken her.

She had heard of vaccination in England. Her admiration for English institutions had been encouraged by her friendship with Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and the influence of Voltaire. The practical English had imported vaccination from the Orient, and an English-woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had set a brave example by allowing herself and her son to be inoculated. On the other hand, there were many voices raised against it. The physicians of the Sorbonne discountenanced vaccination and disregarded the experience of England with the practice. Frederick the Great was intensely afraid of it and wrote to Catherine to urge her strongly not to take the risk. She replied that she had always feared the smallpox and wished more than anything else to be freed of her enslavement to this fear. “I am so struck by a situation so unworthy that I regard it as a weakness not to escape from it.”

She entered into correspondence with an English surgeon, Dr. Thomas Dimsdale, who was adventurous enough to accept her invitation to come to Russia. He had published a work on inoculation and this had attracted the Empress’s attention; she had always been a great importer and reader of foreign books. The famous Dr. Dimsdale arrested her attention, preoccupied as she was at all times with her anxiety about smallpox.

He arrived at the court of Petersburg in December, 1768. He was received as all foreign guests were received with social entertainments which the worthy doctor subsequently described in full in his tracts on inoculation in Russia. The Empress had been warned against the experiment and her fears were rife. Although she had sent for Dimsdale to vaccinate her, she still continued to discuss the matter pro and con. At last she put an end to her fears by ordering the physician to vaccinate her secretly one day. The test succeeded capitally. The ghost of this fear was laid, never to walk again.

The Grand Duke Paul was now vaccinated and Gregory Orlov. On the second day after the operation, Orlov had gone hunting. This was news to send to Europe, still trembling at the bare thought of vaccination. The Empress wrote the story to Voltaire, trusting him to spread it in the proper quarters. All at once she was ashamed that she had ever been so timorous as to fear vaccination. After all, every street urchin in England had as much courage as that! She urged inoculation upon court circles in Petersburg and the aristocratic Russians suddenly became very bold. Dr. Dimsdale was kept busy with impatient applicants. “A few weeks ago,” said Catherine, “nobody would hear of inoculation; but now nobody can wait to be vaccinated. It has become the fashion.”