Revolutionary though it was, the February 1722 ukase was only a preliminary step to a still more sensational act: Peter's declaration that he had decided to formally crown Catherine as empress. A decree of November 15, 1723, declared that whereas
our best beloved Spouse, Consort, and Empress Catherine has been a great support to us, and not only in this, but also in many military operations, putting aside womanly weakness, of her own will she has been present with us and has helped in every way possible ... for these labors of our Spouse we have decided that by virtue of the supreme power given us by God, she shall be crowned, which, God willing, is to take place formally in Moscow in the present winter.
Peter was treading on dangerous ground. Catherine was a Lithuanian servant girl who had come to Russia as a captive. Was she now to wear the imperial crown and sit on the throne of the Russian tsars? Although the manifesto proclaiming the coronation did not specifically name Catherine as heir, on the night before the coronation Peter told several senators and a number of important church dignitaries at the house of an English merchant that Catherine was being crowned in order to give her the right to rule the state. He waited for objections; he heard none.
The coronation ceremony was to be on the grandest scale. Peter, who was always careful about spending money on himself, commanded that no expense be spared. An imperial coronation mantle was ordered from Paris, and a St. Petersburg jeweler was commissioned to make a new imperial crown more magnificent than any previously worn by a Russian sovereign. The ceremony would be held not in Peter's city, the new capital of St. Petersburg, but in Holy Moscow, inside the Kremlin, according to the traditions of the ancient tsars. Stephen Yavorsky, president of the Holy Synod, and the indefatigable Peter Tolstoy were sent to Moscow six months early with orders to make the ceremony glorious. The Senate, the Holy Synod and every official and nobleman of rank was commanded to be present.
Peter was delayed by a bout of strangury at the beginning of March 1724 and went to Olonets to drink the waters and try to improve his health. By March 22, he was sufficiently recovered, and he and Catherine set out together for Moscow. At dawn on May 7, a signal cannon was fired from the Kremlin. The procession outside the Kremlin included 10,000 soldiers of the Imperial Guard and a squadron of booted horse guards whose passage was watched somewhat sourly by certain Moscow merchants whose noblest steeds had been appropriated by Tolstoy for the ceremony. At ten o'clock, as every bell in Moscow pealed and every cannon in the city thundered, Peter and Catherine appeared at the top of the Red Staircase, escorted by all the officials of the realm, the members of the Senate, generals of the army and great officers of state. The Empress was dressed in a purple gown embroidered in gold, and needed five ladies in waiting to carry her train. Peter was wearing a sky-blue tunic embroidered in silver and red silk stockings. Together, the couple stood looking out over the crowd in Cathedral Square from exactly the spot where, forty-two years before, ten-year-old Peter and his mother had looked over the raging Streltsy and their forest of glittering halberds. Then, they descended the Red Staircase, walked across Cathedral Square and entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. In the center, a platform had been constructed, and on it, beneath a canopy of velvet and gold, two chairs encrusted with precious stones waited for Peter and Catherine.
At the door of the cathedral, Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich and the other high clergymen, dressed in their clerical robes, met the imperial couple. Yavorsky presented the cross for them to kiss, then conducted them to the thrones. The service began while Peter and Catherine sat side by side in silence. At the climax of the ceremony, Peter rose and Yavorsky presented him with the new imperial crown. Peter took it and, turning to the audience, declared in a loud voice, 'It is our intention to crown our beloved consort.' Peter himself placed the crown on Catherine's head. He then handed her the orb, but, significantly, he kept the scepter, the emblem of ultimate power, in his own hand. The crown was studded with 2,564 diamonds, pearls and other precious stones, and an enormous ruby as large as a pigeon's egg was set immediately beneath a cross of diamonds at the apex of the crown.
As Peter placed the crown on her head, Catherine, overcome with emotion, tears streaming down her cheeks, knelt before him and tried to kiss his hand. He pulled it away and she tried to embrace him around his knees, but Peter lifted her up. Then, prayers were solemnly chanted, cannon thundered and the bells of Moscow pealed.
After the service, Peter returned to the palace to rest, but Catherine, wearing her crown, walked alone at the head of a procession from the Assumption Cathedral to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael to pray at the tombs of the tsars, according to custom. The imperial mantle, made in France and encrusted with hundreds of golden double-headed eagles, was now on her shoulders, and its great weight, even borne in part by attendants, forced her to stop and rest several times. As she walked, Menshikov followed slightly behind, scattering handfuls of gold and silver among the watching crowd. At the foot of the Red Staircase, the Duke of Holstein waited to conduct her to the Terem Palace, where a magnificent banquet had been prepared. During the banquet, Menshikov distributed medals bearing a portrait of Peter and Catherine on one side and, on the reverse, a depiction of Peter placing the crown on Catherine's head and the words 'Crowned in Moscow in 1724.' The feasting and celebration went on in the city for days. In Red Square, two huge oxen had been roasted and stuffed with game and poultry, while two fountains, one running with red wine and the other with white, splashed nearby.
Catherine's powers and the Emperor's long-range intent were unspecified. As a sign that she exercised some aspects of sovereignty, Peter allowed her to create old Peter Tolstoy a count, a title which all his descendants, including the great novelist Lev Tolstoy, have worn. By her command, Yaguzhinsky was made a Knight of the Order of St. Andrew, and Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, disgraced and exiled in the affair of the Tsarevich Alexis-, was allowed to return to court. But her powers even in this respect were limited. She pleaded in vain for a pardon for the exiled former Vice Chancellor Shafirov. What Peter actually intended, no one was sure. It is possible that he had not made up his mind even as he lay on his deathbed. But it is certain that he wanted to ensure Catherine's importance— perhaps to act as regent for one of his daughters if not actually to wear the crown. Peter knew that the throne of Russia could not be bestowed simply as a reward for faithful and loving service. The wearer of the crown had to be a person of energy, wisdom and experience. Catherine's qualities were somewhat different. Still, she had been anointed, and Campredon, the French envoy, concluded that Peter wanted her thus to be 'recognized as regent and sovereign after the death of her husband.'
After her coronation, more than ever the path to favor lay through Catherine. Yet, within a few weeks of this triumph, Catherine found herself teetering on the brink of personal disaster, looking down at the possibility of utter ruin. Among Catherine's attendants was a handsome young man named William Mons, the younger brother of Anna Mons, who had been Peter's mistress twenty-five years earlier. Mons was a foreigner, a German born in Russia with one foot well placed in each world. Elegant, gay, clever, ambitious and opportunistic, he had chosen his patrons shrewdly, worked hard and risen to the rank of chamberlain and the post of secretary and confidant to Catherine. The Empress enjoyed his company, for he was, in the words of a French observer, 'One of the best-made and most handsome men that I have ever seen.' Mons' sister Matrena had achieved equal success. She was married to a Baltic nobleman named Fedor Balk, a major general who was Governor of Riga, while she herself was a lady in waiting and the closest confidante of the Empress Catherine.
Gradually, between them, on the pretense of assisting the Empress and looking after her interests, brother and sister contrived to gain control of access to Catherine. Through Mons and Matrena Balk, messages, petitions and appeals were most likely to be presented favorably to Catherine; indeed; without their help, such messages were unlikely to reach her at all. And since Catherine's influence over her husband was known to be great, the Mons channel became immensely valuable. Government ministers, foreign ambassadors, even foreign princes and members of the Emperor's family approached the zealous and handsome German with a petition in one hand and a bribe in the other. No personage was too august—the Tsaritsa Praskovaya and her daughters, the Duke of Holstein, Prince Menshikov, Prince Repnin and Count Tolstoy—or too humble—a peasant who was supposed to return to his village bribed Mons to arrange permission to remain in Petersburg. Mons arranged his 'fees' according to the importance of the service and the wealth of the petitioner. Besides the wealth gained by these activities, Mons and his sister received estates, serfs and money directly from the Empress. Deferred to by the highest in Russia, with Menshikov calling him 'brother,' Mons concluded that 'William Mons' was too simple a name for such a magnifico, and changed his name to Moens de la Croix. Obligingly, everyone called him by his new name—except Peter, who did not know either of the transformation or of the reason for the new importance of the former William Mons.
Gossip said there were other things that Peter did not know about William Mons. It was whispered in Petersburg, and soon after in Europe, that the Empress had taken the handsome young chamberlain as a lover. Lurid stories circulated, including one that Peter had found his wife with Mons one moonlit night in a compromising position in her garden. No evidence of any kind was cited. The moonlit-garden tale is disposed of by the fact that
