Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (51 page)

On Christmas morning, Elizabeth asked Father Dubyansky to read the Orthodox Prayer for the Dying. When he finished, she asked him
to read it again. She blessed everyone in the room and, according to Orthodox custom, asked each person in the room for forgiveness. On Christmas Day, December 25, 1761, near four o’clock in the afternoon, Empress Elizabeth died. A few minutes later, Prince Nikita Trubetskoy, the president of the Senate, opened the double doors of the bedroom and announced to the waiting crowd, “
Her Imperial Majesty, Elizabeth Petrovna, has fallen asleep in the Lord. God preserve our gracious sovereign, the Emperor Peter III.”

42
The Brief Reign of Peter III

T
HE ARCHBISHOP OF
N
OVGOROD
blessed Peter as the new
gosudar
(autocrat), the Senate and the heads of the Colleges of State (government ministries) took the oath of allegiance, and the cannon of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul thundered the proclamation of the accession of the new monarch. Peter rode out into the Palace Square to receive the oaths of the regiments of Foot Guards, the Preobrazhensky, Semyonovsky, and Izmailovsky; the Horse Guards; the line regiments; and the Cadet Corps. When the figure of the new emperor, wearing the bottle-green uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards, appeared, illuminated by torches, the regimental standards dipped in salute. Delighted, Peter returned to the palace and told the Austrian ambassador, Count Mercy, “
I did not think they loved me so much.” That evening, he presided over a supper for 150 people who had been instructed to dress in light colors to celebrate Peter’s accession rather than the usual black customary for mourning. At the table, Catherine sat on one side of the emperor. Ivan Shuvalov, Elizabeth’s favorite, in tears at the empress’s bedside, stood behind Peter’s chair, laughing and joking. The following night, Peter gave another banquet for which ladies were commanded to come “richly dressed.” Princess Dashkova refused to attend these festivities, pleading illness. As the evening progressed, she received a message from her sister saying that the new emperor was annoyed by her absence and did not believe her excuse, and that it might go hard with the princess’s husband, Prince Dashkov, if she did not appear. Dashkova obeyed. When she appeared, Peter approached
and said in a low voice, “
If, my little friend, you will take my advice, pay a little more attention to us. The time may come when you will have good reason to repent of any negligence shown your sister. Believe me, it is for your interest alone I speak. You have no other way of making yourself of consequence in the world than by seeking her protection.”

Ten days before the funeral, the body of Empress Elizabeth was moved to the Kazan Cathedral, where, in a silver embroidered robe, it was placed in an open coffin, surrounded by candles. A stream of mourners, flowing past the coffin in semidarkness, could not help seeing a veiled figure, draped in black, wearing neither crown nor jewelry, kneeling on the stone floor beside the bier, apparently lost in grief. All knew that this was the new empress, Catherine. Catherine was there in part out of respect but also because she understood that there was no better way to appeal directly to the people than with this demonstration of humility and apparent devotion. Indeed, she played the part so well that the French ambassador reported to Paris that “more and more, she captures the hearts of Russians.”

Peter’s behavior in the presence of Elizabeth’s body was in stark contrast. Through the weeks of public mourning, the new emperor acted out his joy at being released from eighteen years of political and cultural imprisonment. Intoxicated by his new freedom, he resisted conforming to the customs of the Orthodox Church regarding death. He refused to stand in respectful vigil or to kneel beside the coffin. On the few occasions he appeared in the cathedral, he paced restlessly, talking loudly, making jokes, laughing, pointing, and even sticking out his tongue at the priests. Most of the time, he remained in his own apartment, drinking and shouting with an excitement he seemed unable to control.

The climax to this display of mockery came on the day Elizabeth’s body was moved from the Kazan Cathedral, across the Neva River bridge, to the mausoleum on the island fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Peter, conspicuously alone, walked immediately behind the coffin. He wore a black mourning robe with a long train, carried by elderly noblemen. The new emperor’s prank was to lag behind, then stop completely until the coffin had advanced thirty feet ahead of him. Then, with long strides, he would hurry forward to catch up. The older men, unable to
manage the emperor’s pace, were forced to let go of his train and let it flap wildly in the wind. Delighted by their embarrassment, Peter repeated this sequence over and over. This grotesque buffoonery by a man almost thirty-four years old, walking at the funeral of the woman who had made him an emperor, shocked everyone: the noblemen walking in the procession, the officers and soldiers lining the route, and the crowds of people watching.

Despite this flamboyantly inappropriate behavior, Peter followed a moderate political path in the early weeks of his reign. Michael Vorontsov, restored to the chancellorship after Bestuzhev’s fall, retained that post, although in Elizabeth’s last years he had sided with the anti-Prussian, pro-French Shuvalovs. Peter immediately recalled long-banished officials. Ernst Johann Biron, Empress Anna’s German chancellor and lover and the father of the Princess of Courland, was permitted to exchange his retirement in Yaroslavl for a comfortable residence in Petersburg. Lestocq, Elizabeth’s French physician and counselor, and old Field Marshal Münnich, another German, were pardoned and brought back from exile. Nothing was done, however, to ameliorate the disgrace of Alexis Bestuzhev, the former chancellor, who had always supported Austria and opposed Prussia. His exclusion from the general amnesty made a painful impression on many Russians. It seemed that political offenders with foreign names were being allowed to return, but this Russian statesman, who had worked so long for his country’s secure position in Europe, remained in disgrace.

A stream of popular administrative changes followed these amnesties. Whether these efforts stemmed from a planned effort to win public favor or were simply an extension of Peter’s unpredictable behavior, no one knew. On January 17, he pleased the entire population by reducing the government tax on salt. On February 18, he delighted the nobility by issuing a manifesto ending compulsory service to the state. This obligation was a legacy from the reign of Peter the Great, who, after declaring that he, as tsar, was “the first servant of the state,” had then decreed that all landowners and other noblemen owed a similar duty. The result had created a permanent officer corps for the army and navy and a permanent administration staff for the Russian bureaucracy. Now, the descendants of these noblemen were freed from all military and civil obligations; they would no longer be compelled to perform
years of state service. They were also granted freedom to travel abroad and, except in wartime, to remain as long as they liked. On February 21, Peter abolished the Secret Chancellery, the dreaded investigative chamber that dealt with those accused of treason or sedition. At the same time, Russian religious dissenters, the Raskolniki, were permitted to return, with full liberty of worship, from the countries to which they had fled to avoid persecution by the the Orthodox Church.

In March, Peter visited the grim Schlüsselburg Fortress, where the former emperor, Ivan VI, deposed by Empress Elizabeth, had been confined for eighteen years. Peter, certain that his own place on the throne was secure, thought of giving Ivan an easier life, perhaps even of releasing him and appointing him to a military post. The condition of the man he found made these plans impossible. Ivan, now twenty-two, was tall and thin, with hair to his waist. He was illiterate, stammered out disconnected sentences, and was uncertain about his own identity. His clothes were torn and dirty, his bed was a narrow pallet, the air in his prison room was heavy, and the only light came from small, barred windows high up in the wall. When Peter offered to help, Ivan asked whether he could have more fresh air. Peter gave him a silk dressing gown, which the former emperor hid under his pillow. Before leaving the fortress, Peter ordered a house to be built in the courtyard where the prisoner might have more air and more room to walk.

Peter rose at seven o’clock and dressed with his adjutants standing by, reading reports and receiving orders. From eight to eleven he consulted his ministers and made a round of public offices, often finding only junior clerks on duty. At eleven, he appeared on the parade ground, where he conducted a rigorous inspection of uniforms and weapons and drilled the troops, assisted by his Holstein officers. At one o’clock, he dined, inviting to his table anyone to whom he wished to speak, regardless of rank. His afternoons often included a nap, followed by a concert in which he played his violin. Then came supper and a party, which sometimes lasted late into the night. Most of these evenings involved heavy smoking, drinking, and carousing. Peter always carried a pipe and was followed by a servant carrying a large basket filled with Dutch clay pipes and a variety of tobaccos. The room quickly filled with smoke, and through this haze, the emperor strutted up and down, loudly talking and laughing. The company, sitting at long tables covered with bottles,
and understanding that Peter hated ceremony and liked to be treated as a comrade, let themselves go. Presently, they would all get up and stagger into the courtyard, where they played hopscotch like children, hopping on one leg, butting their comrades, and kicking them from behind. “Imagine our feelings to see the first men of the empire, covered with ribbons and stars, behaving this way,” said a onetime guest. When one of the Holsteiners fell to the ground, the others would laugh and clap until the servants came and carried him away. But Peter was always up again at seven o’clock.

This frantic energy displayed little organization or purpose. “
The moderation and clemency of the emperor’s acts,” Count Mercy wrote to Vienna, “do not indicate anything fixed or definite. He has a mind but little exercised in affairs, little given to solid considerations, and continually occupied by prejudices. His natural disposition is heady, violent, and irrational.” A few days later, Mercy added, “
I can find nobody here of sufficient zeal and courage energetically to resist the vehement and obstinate temper of the monarch. They all flatter his stubbornness for their own private ends.”

Severe conflict arose when Peter attempted to impose change on some of the deep-rooted institutions of the Russian empire. His goodwill did not extend to the Orthodox Church. Since coming to Russia eighteen years before, he had hated his adopted form of Christianity. He believed its doctrines and dogmas to be sheer superstition, its services ludicrous, its priests contemptible, and its wealth obscene. The religion he had brought with him from Holstein was Lutheran. Now, as emperor and the official head of the Orthodox Church, he decided that this age-old pillar of Russian life and culture must be remade on the Protestant model practiced in Prussia. Frederick II was a freethinker who sneered at priests and religious belief; why should he, Peter, not do the same? On February 16, a decree secularized all church property, placing it in the hands of a new governmental department. Dignitaries of the Orthodox Church were to become salaried officials paid by the state. When the higher clergy expressed indignation and dismay, Peter bluntly announced that the veneration of icons was a primitive practice that must be eliminated. All icons except those of Jesus Christ—all of the painted and carved renditions of the saints who were a part of Russian history—were to be removed from churches. Then, striking directly at the Russian clergy themselves, he demanded that priests shave off their beards and abandon the long brocaded robes that reached to
the floor; in the future, he said, they must wear black cassocks like Protestant pastors. The archbishops replied that if the clergy obeyed these commands, they would be murdered by their flocks. That Easter, the usual open-air religious processions were banned, spurring talk among the people that the emperor was a pagan—or, worse, a Protestant. Indeed, Peter told the archbishop of Novgorod that he meant to establish a Protestant chapel in the new Winter Palace. When the archbishop protested, Peter shouted that the prelate was an old fool and that a religion good enough for the king of Prussia should be good enough for Russia.