dangerous. In any event, according to the order of the succession, they would only come after their mother, the putative empress. For the moment, the priority was to get them married as quickly as possible. Catherine was quite unconcerned about that and relied on Menshikov and his friends to support her in her intrigues. Before the tsar had even heaved his last sigh, they sent emissaries to the principal barracks to prepare the officers of the Guard for a coup d’etat in favor of their future “little mother Catherine.”
As the doctors and then the priests recorded the death of Peter the Great, a wan sunrise seeped over the sleeping city. It was snowing, with great soft flakes. Catherine wrung her hands and wept so abundantly in front of the plenipotentiaries assembled around the funeral bed that Captain Villebois, Peter the Great’s aide-de-camp, would note in his memoirs: “One could not conceive that there could be so much water in a woman’s brain.
Many people ran to the palace just to see her crying and sighing.”2
«6»
Catherine Shows the Way The tsar’s death was finally announced by a 100-gun salute fired from the Peter and Paul fortress. The bells tolled on every church. It was time to make a decision. The whole nation was waiting to find out whom it would have to adore - or fear - in the future. At eight o’clock in the morning, cons cious of her responsibility before History, Catherine proceeded to a large hall in the palace where the senators were gathered, with the members of Holy Synod and the dignitaries of the first four classes of the hierarchy - a sort of Council of the Wise known as the “Generalite” of the empire.
The discussion was impassioned from the start. To begin with, Peter the Great’s personal secretary Makarov swore on the Gospels that the tsar had not written a will. Seizing the ball on the rebound, Menshikov pleaded eloquently on behalf of His Majesty’s widow. His first argument was that, having married the former maidservant from Livonia (Catherine was born Marta Skawronska) in 1707, Peter the Great had then chosen, one year before his death, to have her crowned empress in the Cathedral of the Archangel, in Moscow. By this solemn and unprecedented act, according to Menshikov, he had shown that there was no need to resort to any written will since, while he was alive, Peter had taken care to bless his wife as sole inheritor of power.
But this explanation struck his adversaries as specious: they objected that in no monarchy in the world did the crowning of the monarch’s wife confer upon her ipso facto the right to the succession. Supporting this viewpoint, Prince Dmitri Golitsyn advanced the candidature of the sovereign’s grandson, Peter Alexeyevich, the proper son of Alexis - saying that this child, of the same blood as the deceased, should be considered before all the other applicants. However, given the boy’s tender age, that choice would imply the designation of a regent until he came of majority; and every regency in Russia had been marred by conspiracies and
«7»
Terrible Tsarinas disturbances. The latest, centered around the Grand Duchess Sophia, had nearly compromised the reign of her brother Peter the Great. She had woven against him intrigues so black that she had had to be thrown into a convent to stop her wicked ways. Did the nobles want to go through that kind of experience again, by bringing to power their protege, with a guardian hovering over him and offering advice? The adversaries in this party suggested that women are not prepared to direct the affairs of an empire as vast as Russia. Their nerves, they said, are too fragile, and they are surrounded by greedy favorites whose extravagances are far too costly to the nation. With that, the supporters of young Peter asserted that Catherine was a woman like Sophia and that it was better to have an imperfect regent than an inexperienced empress.
Stung by the affront, Menshikov and Tolstoy reminded the critics that Catherine had demonstrated an almost virile courage in following her husband to every battlefield and had shown a welltrained mind in her covert participation in all his political decisions. When the debate was at its hottest, murmurs of approval rose from the back of the room. Several officers of the Guard had infiltrated the assembly (without being invited), and they delivered their opinion on a question which, in theory, concerned only the members of the Generalite.
General Repnin, outraged by this impertinence, sought to drive out the intruders, but Ivan Buturlin had already gone up to a window and was moving his hand in a queer way. At this signal, drum rolls resounded from afar, accompanied by fifes playing martial music. Two regiments of the Guard, convened in haste, were waiting in an inner court of the palace for the order to intervene.
While they noisily penetrated the building, Repnin, crimsonfaced, howled: “Who dared… without my orders…?” “I followed those of Her Majesty, the Empress,” answered Buturlin, without leaving the window.
«8»
Catherine Shows the Way This demonstration by the army stifled the last of the protesters’ exclamations. In the meantime, Catherine had slipped away. She had been sure of her victory from the first comments.
In the presence of the troops, the Lord High Admiral Apraxin had Makarov confirm that no will existed that opposed the assembly’s decision and, thus reassured, he concluded good-naturedly, “Let us go and offer our homage to the reigning empress!” The best arguments are those of the saber and the gun. Convinced in the wink of an eye, the Generalite, princes, senators, generals and ecclesiastics submissively moved toward the apartments of Her very new Majesty.
In order to conform to legal procedures, Menshikov and Buturlin promulgated a proclamation that same day certifying that “the very serene Prince Peter the Great, emperor and sovereign of all the Russias,” had wished to regulate the succession of the empire by having “his dear wife, our very gracious Empress and Dame Catherine Alexeyevna [crowned],… because of the great and important services that she has rendered to the advantage of the Russian Empire…” At the bottom of the proclamation one may read, “Presented to the Senate, in St. Petersburg, January 28,
1725.”3
The publication of this document aroused no serious opposition among the notables nor the general public; and Catherine began to breathe more easily. The deal was done. For her, it was a second birth. When she thought back to her past as a soldiers’ whore, she was dizzied by her elevation to the rank of legitimate wife, then of sovereign. Her parents, simple Livonian farmers, had died of the plague one after the other, when she was still very young. After wandering through the countryside, famished and all in tatters, she was taken in by the Lutheran pastor Gluck, who employed her as a maidservant. But, an orphan with a tempting figure, she quickly betrayed his tutelage and ran off, sleeping in
Terrible Tsarinas the camps of the Russian army that had come to conquer Polish Livonia. She rose in rank from one lover to another, until she became the mistress of Menshikov, then of Peter himself. If he enjoyed her, it was certainly not for her education, for she was practically illiterate and she spoke execrable Russian; but he had many occasions to appreciate her valiancy, her spirit and her great allure. The tsar had always sought out women who were wellendowed in flesh and simple in spirit. Even if Catherine was often untrue to him, even if he was fed up with her betrayals, he returned to her even after the worst quarrels. The notion that the “break up” was final, this time, left her feeling both punished and relieved.
The fate that was in store for her seemed extraordinary, not only because of her modest origins but because
