Great Catherine (30 page)

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Peter surveyed the room with satisfaction. He was master here, the officers and courtiers did his bidding now, just as they had once done the bidding of his hated predecessor. To be sure, there was some unrest in the city, and word had recently come to him of uprisings among the peasants of Astrakhan. But Astrakhan was far away, and besides a regiment had been dispatched to arrest the leaders and crush the rebellion. Slightly more irritating were the reports he was receiving from his generals, telling him that large numbers of soldiers claimed to be ill, and were unable to embark for the Danish campaign. But he knew how to deal with that. He had issued a ukase, a legislative order, commanding them to recover their health. They dared not go against an imperial command.

More courses were brought, and flagons of wine. The emperor drained his goblet again and again, until he began to have trouble holding it steady as he lifted it to salute the Prussian envoy. There were those, he knew, who cautioned him against leaving the country to command the Danish campaign. Even his mentor Frederick, whom he respected more than anyone, had written to advise him not to leave Russia until he had undergone the rite of coronation. The people were not to be trusted, Frederick had written. They might prove rebellious against a sovereign who had not received the divine sanction of coronation. But he meant to leave anyway, he was eager to be about the work of soldiering. He could not be bothered to go to Moscow—that hateful, priest-ridden city with its hundreds of churches and thousands of noisy clanging bells—merely to submit himself to some archaic ritual.

Peter ordered his goblet refilled and stood to propose a toast. "Let us drink," he called out, his words slurred, "to the health of the king our master." There was a rustling of silk and a scraping of chairs as the guests stood to share the toast.

"To King Frederick," Peter said loudly. "He did me the honor of giving me a regiment; I hope he won't take it back from me." He turned to the Prussian envoy. "You can assure him that, if he asks it of me, I'll go and make war in hell with all my empire."

With that the emperor drained his glass, and his guests joined him. More toasts followed, including one to the imperial family. Everyone stood to raise his or her glass, even the French and Austrian ambassadors, the resentful Russian officers, the servants and officials who had felt the lash of the emperor's tongue and the punishing impact of his wrath.

Everyone, that is, but Catherine. She sat where she was, provocative in her self-possession, alone in her mute defiance of her husband's salutes. He saw what she was doing, tried to ignore her, but finally lost his temper. Why, he demanded to know, had she not stood like the others?

The diners held their breaths, the servants stopped where they were. Not a glass clinked, not a knife scraped. Catherine turned toward Peter.

"We toasted the imperial family. I am a member of that family, along with the emperor and our son. How could I stand up to drink a toast to myself?"

As enraged by Catherine's calm as he was by her sophistry, Peter shouted at her.

"Fool! Fool!" His voice echoed in the huge chamber. The diners, frightened by the ugliness and bitterness in the emperor's tone, sat as if paralyzed, hardly daring to blink.

But Catherine, though fully aware of the danger she was in, retained her outward poise. Earlier that evening she had come to a quiet resolve. She would no longer sit by and watch her husband's pathetic charade of rule. She would not wait until he took his vengeance on her. She would let those who were eager to act on her behalf do what they planned to do. With their help, and trusting in the invisible hand that guided all things, she would seize the throne.

Chapter Seventeen

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THE AIR OFF THE BALTIC WAS THICK AND HUMID, AND WARM even for June. On the horizon a pale gold, watery sun hung suspended as the murky twilit night gave way to a blurry dawn. The rickety carriage that sped toward Peterhof from the capital careened over the bumpy, pitted road but did not slacken speed, even when the horses stumbled and the fragile wooden frame shivered as if it would break. Inside were Alexis Orlov and his lieutenant Vasily Bibikov, the latter disguised as a valet. They were on their way to Catherine, bringing her a message of the greatest urgency. One of the men she was relying on most to help her take the throne had been arrested, and the others, fearing that under torture he might reveal the entire plan, had decided that the time had come to act.

It was June 28, two days before Peter was due to lead his army on campaign into Denmark. For weeks Catherine and her allies had been quietly making preparations to take power, meeting at the house of Princess Dashkov, drawing more and more guards officers into the conspiracy, along with thousands of the private soldiers who pledged themselves to come to Catherine's defense whenever she called on them. Gregory Orlov took the lead, throwing his immense energy and his immense prestige into a one-man campaign of persuasion. He and his brothers worked to

circumvent the strictly military hazards—securing the roads, assuring the loyalty of the artillery corps, defusing potential pockets of resistance—while Panin, Catherine's principal adviser, addressed the political questions and took responsibility for safeguarding the heir to the throne, Paul, who, rumor had it, was about to be discarded by his putative father along with Catherine.

Panin and Catherine had drawn up a manifesto to be issued on the day she took power. It was even now being printed, in the greatest secrecy, by an officer at the risk of his life.

The carriage clattered to a halt outside the small villa called Mon Plaisir where Catherine was living, and the servants, already awake, admitted the tall Alexis Orlov to her bedroom.

Gently he woke the drowsing Catherine.

"It is time to get up," Catherine later remembered hearing him say, in a voice that conveyed a remarkable serenity. "All is ready to proclaim you."

It had been agreed by all the conspirators that, if their plan was betrayed, the guards would immediately be assembled and Catherine would be declared empress—no matter where Peter was or what he was doing. At the moment, Peter was at Oranien-baum, only a few miles away, with his fifteen hundred Holstein-ers. But Peter was no doubt still in bed, sleeping the sleep of the inebriated, and if Catherine hurried to the capital, and her luck held, she had a good chance of securing the city before her husband could give orders for her arrest.

While Catherine's women rapidly dressed her in the simplest of black gowns—she was still in mourning for the late empress— Orlov told her of the arrest of Lieutenant Passek, who had been overheard giving encouragement to seditious talk by one of the emperor's spies. She understood at once the need for haste, and stepped into the waiting carriage, which sped off toward Petersburg.

During the tense hour and a half that followed, as the carriage lurched and jolted over the uneven road, with the driver whipping the horses to breakneck speed, Catherine came fully awake

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and did her best to gather her thoughts. The hour had come at last to test her resolve. She who had told the French ambassador "There is no woman bolder than I," and who had confessed to Charles Hanbury-Williams that her ambition was "as great as is humanly possible," was about to prove to the world that her boasts were not in vain.

Her thoughts may for a brief time have lingered on Hanbury-Williams, who had believed in her and encouraged her and who, sadly, had not long outlived his stay in Russia. She had often talked to her English friend about her sustaining belief that her life was guided by a supernal force that had preserved her and would continue to do so until she fulfilled her destiny. She may well have said a silent prayer or two as the suburbs of Petersburg came into view and she turned her attention to more immediate concerns.

The original plan had been to choose a propitious time and arrest Peter in his chamber at the palace, with the guardsmen locking him up and then relying on their overwhelming numbers to intimidate the palace bodyguard. Now the conspirators would have to improvise. With the guards' backing, they would need to secure the city, isolating Peter at Oranienbaum and laying siege to the estate if necessary. At all costs, the emperor—and those with a stake in keeping him in power—had to be prevented from communicating with foreign governments, and from fleeing abroad to seek safety.

A hundred doubts must have raced through Catherine's restless mind as the carriage hurtled over the rough stones and along the scarred, unpaved track that led into the city. Would the guardsmen all acclaim her, or would some hold back? How many lives would her bid for power cost? Would there be time to do all that needed to be done before a counterattack came? Would the people of the capital support her? Peter was known to be nearly as popular among the ordinary citizens as he was hated by the nobles, the soldiers and the clergy—though Catherine too was popular, probably more so. Could she succeed? Had she the stomach for the contest?

All doubts aside, there was no longer any choice. Only a few weeks earlier, on the night of the peace celebration, Catherine had sensed that a turning point had been reached, and that she dared not hesitate. She had known Peter too long and too well not to recognize a change in him, a new recklessness in his dealings with all those whom he perceived as his enemies. He was bent on a campaign of destruction, lashing out at the guards regiments, the church, the governing nobles, herself. Seeking protection from his wrath she had taken refuge at Peterhof, drawing as little attention to herself as possible while secretly sending and receiving messages from those who had promised to enthrone her. Now, suddenly, she and her fellow conspirators were out in the open. There was no longer any zone of protection. There were only two choices: the path of daring or the path of cowardice. And Catherine had never been a coward.

The carriage lurched to a halt at the side of the road, the lathered horses drooping and spent. Another carriage was waiting, and beside it stood the tall, strapping figure of Gregory Orlov, massive and imposing in his green and red uniform.

Seeing Orlov must have raised Catherine's excited spirits, for from the start he had been the heart and soul of the plot to depose the emperor. He had undertaken to ensure the support of the soldiers; his force of personality had been the catalyst that hardened the men's dissatisfaction with Peter into rebellion. With bribes, promises of drink, well-timed displays of bonhomie he had brought the wavering to heel while distracting the emperor's spies and keeping vital information from reaching them. "Everything was done by him in this enterprise," Catherine would later write of Gregory Orlov. He was her harbinger, her lover, her champion. She got into the coach beside him and the coachman cracked his whip.

Orlov had planned Catherine's entrance into the city with care. They drove first to the wooden barracks of the Ismailovsky regiment, where many of the men and ten of the officers had previously pledged themselves to support Catherine. His rousing

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speeches, supplemented by generous gifts of money and barrels of free vodka ensured that few of the men would resist the bold move to enthrone Catherine. Telling Catherine to wait, Orlov jumped down from the carriage and strode into the guardroom where a few yawning men were gathered. He found a drummer and ordered him to beat a tattoo. Immediately the men began to rush out, in disarray, many only half dressed, to answer the call to arms.

At a signal from Orlov Catherine descended from the carriage to stand before the scrambling guardsmen, whose eyes widened at the sight of her, a lovely, regal figure in an unadorned black dress, her rich brown hair unpowdered and coiled simply off her face. The men had heard the story of the emperor's threat to arrest his wife, they knew before she spoke to them that she was in danger.

"Matushka, Little Mother!" they cried out, sweeping toward her en masse to kiss her hands and feet. Some wept, others bowed or knelt in reverence, content to kiss the dusty skirt of her plain gown.

As more and more men poured from the barracks a few of the officers shouted for Paul and a regency, and a few more may have hesitated, thinking of the oath they had sworn to uphold their emperor and remembering that Peter, not Catherine, had been the choice of their late beloved Empress Elizabeth. But in the end all hesitation melted in the onrush of chivalrous emotion that greeted Catherine's appearance. The surge of feeling was redoubled when the regimental commander, Kiril Razumovsky, gave his endorsement to Catherine's claim to the throne and when the barracks priest, Father Alexei, administered an oath of fidelity to the assembled men.

Shouting, chanting, exhorting the onlookers who had begun to gather in the vicinity of the barracks, the guardsmen formed a procession behind Catherine's carriage as she rode on to the quarters of the Semenovsky regiment. Word of her coming preceded her; the men of the Semenovsky, elated at the prospect of ridding themselves of the emperor they detested and of rescuing their heroine Catherine from her peril, and with the enthu-

siastic backing of at least a dozen of their officers, ran forward along the road to meet her carriage and proclaim their allegiance to her.

By this time it was nearly nine o'clock and the capital was not only awake but alive with excitement. Soldiers from other barracks hurried to join the lengthening procession of supporters marching behind the imperial carriage, discarding the Prussian-style uniforms Peter had forced them to wear and putting on their Russian uniforms. Priests, troubled by recent reports that Peter had adopted the Lutheran rite in his palace chapel and greatly agitated by the emperor's order to remove the icons of the saints, gladly received the news that they were no longer to be ruled by an emperor but by the Empress Catherine. Rumors flew. Some said that Peter had died, and that Catherine was succeeding him. Others whispered that Peter had sold the Russian army to the king of Prussia, and that the soldiers had decided to dethrone him in consequence.

Meanwhile, men from the recently disbanded imperial bodyguard, many of whom had helped to put Elizabeth on the throne twenty-one years earlier, joined the growing crowd, as did the Horse Guards, riding in full order, with their officers at their head, and shouting in a fury of joy that Russia had been delivered. The surging crowd grew in numbers, cries of "Vivat!" filling the moist morning air. Now thousands of soldiers, riding and on foot, followed the vehicle in which Catherine and Orlov rode, with Father Alexei leading the long procession carrying his tall silver cross.

It soon became apparent that neither the police nor Peter's loyal Holsteiners—who were still at Oranienbaum, several hours' distance from the capital—nor any members of the emperor's government were going to contest the toppling of the regime. Catherine had been assured that the Grand Master of the Ordnance, General de Villebois, was on her side; he would guarantee that none of the artillery corps would fire on the rebels. As for the members of the Senate, in nominal control of the capital in the emperor's absence, they had long been opposed to Peter's radical

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changes and bumptious bullying; during his few months in power he had arrogated to himself many of their cherished prerogatives and had only recently affronted the senators by prohibiting them from issuing any decrees whatsoever without his prior approval. They were only too glad to see the end of him. The entire government capitulated without a whimper of resistance.

Only in the proud Preobrazhensky regiment, oldest and most respected of the guards regiments, were there pockets of defiance. As the men of the Preobrazhensky, heedless of their orders, rushed out of their barracks to join Catherine's partisan horde a few of their officers tried to stop them. There was the beginning of a skirmish between the men loyal to Catherine and those attempting in vain to defend Peter's cause, but before any blood could be shed the emperor's defenders surrendered and swore allegiance to Catherine, turning on their officers. One young musketeer recalled later having watched a mounted officer in the grenadiers charge his own men, flailing at them with his sword, before he was overwhelmed and forced to flee for his life. But the few contrarians, stubbornly faithful to their emperor, were soon subdued and arrested by what had swiftly become the legitimate power—made legitimate, in the judgment of those who took part in the maelstrom of events, by the tumultuous acclamation of the soldiers, the citizenry and the will of heaven.

With amazed speed the regiments secured the palace, where the senators had incarcerated themselves, waiting to see the outcome of Catherine's bid for power, and prepared to defend the city against a possible assault from outside forces still loyal to the emperor. Meanwhile Catherine hastened to legitimize her takeover by receiving the sanction of the church. She entered the cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, flanked by a phalanx of officers, and there, in the presence of a large congregation of witnesses, and under the eyes of the holy icons, she was proclaimed "auto-cratrix," empress, and blessed by the Metropolitan of Petersburg. Panin had brought Paul to the cathedral to stand beside his mother. As incense wafted and bells pealed, the seven-year-old boy was blessed as Catherine's designated heir.

The popular delirium that greeted the new empress as she emerged from the perfumed darkness of the cathedral exceeded anything seen in the capital in decades. The bad dream of Peter's capricious rule was ended. A new and benign mistress reigned. Bells pealed ceaselessly. Word spread throughout the city that momentous events were taking place. Breathless servants rushed in to tell their masters that, in less time than it took to eat breakfast, the emperor had been overthrown. His wife now ruled in his stead.

In the neighborhoods farthest from the palace—which remained the scene of wild rejoicing—the news was accepted gladly and on the whole calmly. No tumult or agitation swept along the broad avenues; indeed the only sign of change was that pickets appeared on every bridge and street corner, and cavalry patrols trotted efficiently along at regular intervals, to ensure that tranquility continued to prevail.

The only damage was done at the mansion of Catherine's Uncle Georg, commander of the Horse Guards and detested by his men. Georg had tried to leave Petersburg, no doubt on his way to join the emperor at Oranienbaum, and had been arrested. His captors mistreated him; vengeful elements in the crowd, eager to vent their resentments, ransacked the fine house Peter had given him and destroyed its expensive contents. Knowing that her uncle might be in danger, Catherine sent out a rescue party to save him, but it arrived too late to prevent harm.

Without pausing to savor her triumph, Catherine went to the Winter Palace where the Senate and the leading churchmen were, along with Panin. There her official manifesto was issued, and its stirring words were read out to the waiting crowd.

"We, by the Grace of God, Catherine the Second, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias," it began—the first time the sonorous title had been applied to the German princess who had been christened Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst.

"All loyal-hearted sons of the Russian Fatherland have clearly perceived the danger that threatened the Empire of Russia. The security of our Orthodox Greek Church has been put in danger

through disrespect for our venerable forms of worship, and even threatened with being forced to conform to another creed. Our sublime Russia has been betrayed, her dearly bought prizes of war taken from her and her neck brought under the yoke of her ancient enemy—and for what? In order to agree to inglorious peace terms." The document went on to denounce the ruined state of Russia's governing institutions, which threatened the country's unity and well-being.

"For these reasons, because of the danger imperiling all our loyal subjects," the manifesto concluded, "we believed ourselves under obligation, with God's help and guided by His justice, and prompted by the evident and sincere desire of our faithful subjects, to ascend the sovereign throne of all the Russias, upon which all our loyal subjects have sworn their allegiance to us."

Catherine was the defender of Russia and the Russians, her declaration announced. What Peter had been destroying, she would restore. It was as a deliverer that she claimed the crown, not as the bearer of any hereditary rights, or legal prerogatives. In truth, Catherine was defying blood rights and ignoring the law in taking her action; all that she did rested on her publicly stated pledge to fulfill the role of savior of the realm.

No one realized this more clearly than the new empress herself. After reviewing her troops, more than forty thousand men in all, including guardsmen and soldiers of country regiments who were hastening to align themselves with the rest of the capital's soldiery, Catherine shut herself in the Winter Palace with her councillors to decide on her next course of action. She sent messengers to every provincial district with copies of her manifesto, and sent Admiral Taliesin to the naval base at Kronstadt to secure the loyalty of the navy. At the same time, she ordered the metropolitan to deliver to the palace the sacred symbols of monarchy—the crown, scepter and holy books—knowing their iconic value to her subjects and in acknowledgment of the fact that she would need to consolidate her accession by being crowned in the near future.

Couriers rode in and out of the palace courtyard all afternoon, bringing news from Peterhof and from every quarter of the capital, carrying directives destined for provincial governors and garrison commanders, relaying messages to and from diplomats and other officials. At the hub of the activity, Catherine and her advisers gave orders, wrote instructions, sorted through the messages, and formulated a strategy. She would go herself to Peterhof, supported by her army, and subdue whatever resistance Peter offered. If all went as they hoped, he would be taken prisoner, and confined in the fortress of Schlusselburg, where Ivan languished. Only when Peter was locked away and under guard would Catherine begin to feel safe.

Late in the afternoon Chancellor Vorontzov arrived from Peterhof, the first member of Peter's inner circle to approach Catherine in her newly claimed role as empress. The soldiers allowed him to enter the city unimpeded, and escorted him to the palace. Once inside, confronting the woman who had been his political enemy for years, the woman who now held the capital under her authority, he showed no fear; disregarding Catherine as anything other than the emperor's rebellious wife, he chastised her. Without responding Catherine ordered Vorontzov to be led away to the cathedral, where under duress he swore his allegiance to her.

A more sinister pair of envoys arrived shortly afterward. Prince Trubetskoy and Alexander Shuvalov, Peter's trusted deputies, had been sent to investigate a troubling rumor reaching Peterhof that the Preobrazhensky regiment had mutinied in support of Catherine. Catherine herself believed that the two men had been given secret orders to kill her. Before they had a chance to make any mischief both men were led away to the cathedral and forced to swear the oath of allegiance to the empress.

Evening came, the bright midsummer twilight settled over Petersburg. Soldiers stationed throughout the city since mid-morning yawned at their posts, still vigilant yet weary. The townspeople, more jubilant than ever over Catherine's triumph,

had invaded the taverns and quickly sated themselves on beer and vodka. Most of the resulting unruliness was good humored, though as the night wore on fights broke out among the drunken revelers and there were outbreaks of vandalism. No police were to be seen; the police chief, Baron Korff, had been arrested despite his being a partisan of Catherine's, and though he was soon released he stayed aloof from the goings-on in the streets.

Catherine, no doubt yawning and weary herself, yet nerved by excitement and an occasional frisson of fear, prepared herself to face the next phase of her great undertaking. Borrowing a uniform, she put on the bright green and red coat of a colonel in the Preobrazhensky regiment, and received a deafening acclamation from the men as she rode out to meet them on her white horse, high black boots covering her legs and a gold-braided, fur-trimmed black tricorn on her head. She rode well, and held herself majestically. She was a splendid sight, youthful and erect in the saddle, the trappings of her horse glinting dully in the eerie half-light, her face pale yet resolute. For the second time that day the soldiers wept and cheered themselves hoarse at the sight of her, moved almost beyond speech by the poignant contrast between her womanly body and her stalwart, warlike dress and pose.

Catherine led the rearguard. With her rode Princess Dashkov, also in a guardsman's uniform, and an escort of officers. Included in Catherine's escort were the two men who had come to kill her, Count Shuvalov and Prince Trubetskoy. In a matter of hours both men had turned definitively against their old master, convinced, from all that they had seen and heard in the capital, that his cause was lost.