Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (12 page)

Now they were all reconciled, united around a common interest, and they strove to convince the empress. Rocked between bouts of pain and delusion, she never left her bed anymore. She must hardly have been able to hear Bühren as he tried to explain to her what he wanted: a simple signature at the bottom of a page. Since she seemed too tired to answer him, he slipped the document under her pillow. Surprised by this gesture, she whispered, “Do you need that?” Then she turned her head and refused to speak anymore.

A few days later, Bestuzhev drafted another declaration, by which the Senate and the Generalité implored Her Majesty to entrust the regency to Bühren, in order to ensure the continuation of the empire “under whatever circumstance may arise.” Once more, the patient left the paper under her pillow without deigning to initial it - nor even to read it. Bühren and “his men” were dismayed by this inertia - which was likely to be final. Would they have to resort again to forgery to avoid trouble? What had happened on January 1730 when the young tsar Peter II had died was not encouraging.* [*Vasily Lukich Dolgoruky, for one, was executed in the wake of that event.] Considering the ill will of the nobility, it would be dangerous to repeat that game with every change of reign.

However, on October 16, 1740, the tsarina took a turn for the better. She called in her old favorite and, with a trembling hand, gave him the signed document. Finally, Bühren could breathe again - and with him, all those in the close band who had contributed to this victory
in extremis
. The new regent’s partisans hoped that their efforts, more or less spontaneous, would be repaid before long, While Her Majesty was on her death bed, they counted the days and calculated the coming rewards. The priest was called in, and the prayer for the dying was said. Lulled by the chanting, she cast her eye about and, in her distress, recognized through her fog the tall silhouette of Münnich among those in attendance. She smiled to him as if beseeching his protection for the one who would one day be taking her place on the throne of Russia, and murmured, “Good-bye, Field Marshal!” Later, she added, “Good-bye, everyone!” These were her last words. She slipped into a coma on October 28, 1740.

At the announcement of her death, Russia shook off a nightmare. But around the palace, the expectation was that the nation might be falling into an even blacker horror. The imperial court was unanimous in its opinion that, with a nine-month-old tsar still in his crib and a regent of German origin (who could express himself in Russian only reluctantly and whose principal concern

was to destroy the country’s noblest families), the empire was heading straight for a catastrophe.

The day after Anna Ivanovna’s death, Bühren became regent by the grace of the recently departed, with a baby as his mascot and as the living guarantee of his rights. He immediately set himself to clearing the ground around him. In his view, the first essential move would be to get rid of Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich, little Ivan’s parents. If he could send them far enough from the capital - and why not abroad? - he would have his free hands until the imperial brat attained his majority. Studying the new political aspect of Russia, Baron Axel of Mardefeld, Prussian Minister to St. Petersburg, summarized his opinion on the future of the country in a dispatch to his sovereign Frederick II, saying: “Seventeen years of despotism [the legal duration of the minority of the tsar] and a nine-month-old child who, by the way, could die, yielding the throne to the regent.”8 Mardefeld’s letter is dated October 29, 1740, the day following the death of the tsarina. Less than a week later, events suddenly took a turn in a direction that the diplomat had not foreseen. Despite the future tsar Ivan VI’s being transferred to the Winter Palace amid great pomp and celebration, in an extravagant ceremony followed by all the courtiers swearing their oath and kissing the hand of the regent, his enemies had not given up.

The new English minister in St. Petersburg, Edward Finch, declared that the change of reign “has made less noise in Russia than the changing of the Guard in Hyde Park”; but Field Marshal Münnich warned Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich against the tortuous machinations of Bühren, who he suggested was intending to throw them both out in order to keep himself in power.

Even though he had been allied with the regent in the very recent past, he said that he felt morally obliged to prevent him from going any further to the detriment of the legitimate rights of the family. According to him, for his next coup d’état, the ex-favorite of the late empress Anna Ivanovna was counting on the Ismailovsky Regiment and the horse guard, one of which was under the command of his brother Gustav, the other under his son. But the Preobrazhensky Regiment was entirely at the behest of the field marshal and this elite unit would be disposed to act, at the proper time, against the ambitious Bühren. “If Your Highness wishes,” Münnich told the princess, “I would relieve you of this treacherous man in one hour.”9 However, Anna Leopoldovna had no stomach for such adventures. Frightened at the thought of attacking a man as powerful and cunning as Bühren, she balked. However, having consulted her husband, she changed her mind and decided, while some trembling, to play all or nothing. During the night of November 8, 1740, a hundred grenadiers and three officers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, sent by Münnich, burst into the room where Bühren was sleeping; they yanked him out of bed and, despite his cries for help, they beat him with their rifle butts and carried him out, semi-conscious, to an enclosed carriage. In the wee hours of the day, he was transported to the Schlusselburg Fortress on Lake Ladoga, where he was methodically whipped.

They needed a charge that could be substantiated before they could have him imprisoned, so he was accused of precipitating the death of the empress by having her ride on horseback at the wrong time. Other crimes, added to this one at the appropriate time, were enough to have him condemned to death on April 8, 1741. First, he was to be drawn and quartered, but his sentence was commuted immediately to exile in perpetuity to a remote village in Siberia; and in one fell swoop, Anna Leopoldovna was proclaimed regent.

To celebrate the happy end of this period of intrigues, usurpations and treason, she rescinded the preceding government’s ban on soldiers’ and warrant officers’ visiting cabarets. This first liberal measure was greeted by an outburst of joy in the barracks - and in the bars. Everyone hoped this was a sign of broader leniency in general. The name of the new regent was blessed everywhere and, with hers, that of the man who had just brought her to power. Only the mean-spirited happened to notice that Bühren was being replaced by Münnich. One German was taking the place of another, without any concern for Muscovite tradition. How long would the empire have to endure a foreign master? And why was it always a member of the weaker sex that came to occupy the throne? Was there no other choice for Russia but to be ruled by an empress, with Germans at her back, whispering in her ear? Sad as it may be for a country to smother under a woman’s skirts, how much worse it is when that woman herself is under the influence of a foreigner. The most pessimistic observers reckoned that Russia would be threatened with a double calamity as a long as real men and real Russians did not stand up against the reign of besotted sovereigns and German lovers. These prophets of gloom saw the matriarchy and the Prussian takeover as two facets of a curse that had befallen the fatherland since the demise of Peter the Great.

Footnotes

1. The “Frenchified” version of his name, plus a pejorative ending, was used to indicate the excesses committed by Bühren and his clique.

2. Ancestor of Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor.”

3. His great-grandson Dmitri Miliutin, War Minister under Alexander II, would retain these evocative emblems on his blazon.

4. Cf. Brian-Chaninov,
Op. Cit.

5. Cf. Kraft:
Description de la maison de glace
, and K. Waliszewski,
Op. Cit.

6. Cf. Daria Oliver,
Op. Cit.

6. Letter dated 10 December 1740, cited by K. Waliszewski,
Op. Cit.

7. Cf. Brian-Chaninov,
Op. Cit.

8. Comments reported in K. Waliszewski,
Op. Cit

Still dazed by her sudden accession to power, Anna Leopoldovna was not so much interested in her political triumph as in the return to St. Petersburg of her last lover, whom the tsarina thought she had skillfully removed from the picture by marrying Anna to the insipid Anthony Ulrich. As soon as the coast was clear, the count of Lynar returned, ready for the most exciting adventures. Casting her eyes upon him once again, she fell under his spell instantly. He hadn’t changed a bit in the months of separation. At the age of 40, he looked barely 30. Tall and slender, with a fine complexion and sparkling eyes, he always wore clothes in soft colors - sky blue, apricot or lilac - and used plenty of French perfumes and a pomade to keep his hands soft. They said he was an Adonis in his prime, or a Narcissus who never aged.

There is no doubt that Anna Leopoldovna made her bed available to him again immediately; and there is no doubt either that Anthony Ulrich accepted this sharing arrangement without blinking an eye. No one at the court was surprised by this eternal triangle, which they had immediately suspected would be reconstituted. Besides, Russian and foreign observers alike noted that the regent’s renewed passion for Lynar by no means diminished the ardor that she continued to feel for her close friend Julie Mengden. That she was able to appreciate the traditional pleasure of the relationship between an woman and a man as much as the ambiguous savor of a relationship with a partner of her own sex was all to her honor, in the opinion of the libertines, for such eclecticism is evidence of both broadmindedness and a generous temperament.

An indolent daydreamer, she would spend long hours lying in bed. She would get up late, trail around in her private chambers, scantily dressed and hair barely done, reading novels that she would drop halfway through, and making the sign of the cross twenty times over before the many icons that she had placed on her walls - the zeal of a convert. She insisted that love and recreation were the only raisons d’être of a woman of her age.

This casual behavior did not bother her entourage, neither her husband nor his ministers. A regent who was more concerned about the goings on in her bedroom than in her State suited them very well. Admittedly, from time to time, in his wounded pride Anthony Ulrich would make a show of being the indignant husband, but his tantrums were so artificial and so brief that Anna Leopoldovna only laughed at him. These fake marital scenes even encouraged her to intensify her dissipation, as a way of teasing him.

However, while continuing his assiduous attentions to her, Lynar was not indifferent to the remonstrances of the Marquis of Botta, Austrian ambassador to St. Petersburg. According to that diplomat, a fine specialist in public and private affairs, the regent’s lover was making a mistake to persevere in an adulterous liaison that was likely to turn against him several of the high-ranking persons in Russia and in his own government in Saxony. He suggested a cynical and adroit solution that would satisfy everyone. Being widowed, unencumbered and pleasant-looking, why shouldn’t Lynar ask for the hand of Julie Mengden, Anna Leopoldovna’s beloved? Satisfying the two of them (one legitimately, the second clandestinely), he would make them both happy and nobody could reproach him for leading the regent to sin. Lynar found the idea appealing; he promised to consider it. What encouraged him to go ahead was that, contrary to what he might have feared, Anna Leopoldovna - duly consulted - did not see any harm in this charming combination. She even thought that, by becoming Lynar’s wife, Julie Mengden would strengthen the loving union between three beings that God, in his subtle clairvoyance, had chosen to make inseparable.

However, the practical application of the arrangement was delayed to enable Lynar to go to Germany, where he intended to settle some urgent family matters. Actually, he took out a large quantity of precious stones in his baggage, the sale of which would be used to build up a “war chest” in case the regent should think of having herself proclaimed empress. During his absence, Anna Leopoldovna exchanged an encrypted correspondence with him, using the pretext to swear their reciprocal love and to determine what role the future countess of Lynar would play in the trio. Above each line, the regent’s letters contain various annotations indicating the true meaning of the message, duly transcribed by a secretary. “As regards Juliette [Julie Mengden], how can you doubt her [my] love and her [my] fondness, after all the signs that I have given you. If you like her [me], do not go on with such reproaches, if her [my] health is of any concern to you… Let me know when you are coming back, and enjoy the certainty that you have all of my affection, [I kiss you and I am very much yours] Anna.”1

Separated from Lynar, Anna Leopoldovna found it more and more difficult to put up with her husband’s reproaches. Nevertheless, needing comfort in the desert of her solitude, she allowed him to visit her in bed from time to time. But he would have to be satisfied with that - just an interim, before the return of the regent’s authentic bed-partner. The Prussian minister, Axel of Mardefeld, observer of the morals of the court of Russia, wrote to his sovereign on October 17, 1741, “She [the regent] has entrusted all matters to [her husband, Anthony Ulrich] so that she can devote her time more freely to leisure and entertainment, which renders him necessary, in a way. It remains to be seen whether she will rely on him the same way when she has a declared favorite. Basically, she does not love him; thus he has had permission to sleep with her only since the departure of Narcissus [Lynar].”2

While she was struggling in this sentimental imbroglio, the men around her were only thinking about politics. After Bühren’s downfall, Münnich was given the title of Prime Minister, a reward of 170,000 rubles for services rendered, and the rank of second man in the empire after Anthony Ulrich, father of the child tsar.