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 Munnich, burst into the room where Buhren 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To celebrate the happy end of this period of intrigues, usurpations and treason, she rescinded the preceding government’s
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The Extravagant Anna 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 Buhren was being replaced by Munnich. 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.
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Terrible Tsarinas
Footnotes 1. The “Frenchified” version of his name, plus a pejorative ending, was used to indicate the excesses committed by Buhren 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.
7. Letter dated 10 December 1740, cited by K. Waliszewski, op. cit.
8. Cf. Brian-Chaninov, op. cit.
9. 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.
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VI
Terrible Tsarinas 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’etre 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 ass iduous 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.
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One Anna after Another 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.
