Before the discussion degenerated into an everyday domestic conflict, Elizabeth sought to regain control. Confronted by this teary woman, she had almost forgotten that the alleged victim of society was a faithless wife and a conspirator. Now, she went on the attack. Pointing to the letters in the gold dish, she said, “How dared you to send orders to Field Marshal Apraxin? “I simply asked him to follow your orders,” murmured Catherine.
“Bestuzhev says that there were many more!”
“If Bestuzhev says that, he lies!” ‘Well, if he is lying, then I will have him put to torture!” exclaimed Elizabeth, giving her daughter-in-law a fatal glance.
But Catherine did not stumble; indeed, the first passe d’armes had boosted her confidence. And it was Elizabeth who suddenly felt ill at ease in this interrogation. To calm herself, she began to pace up and down the length of the room. Peter took advantage of the hiatus to launch out in an enumeration of his wife’s misdeeds.
Exasperated by the invectives from her little runt of a nephew, the tsarina was tempted to side with her daughter-in-law, whom she had just condemned a few minutes before. Her initial jealousy of the young and attractive creature gave way to a kind of female complicity, over the barrier of the generations. In a moment, she
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Terrible Tsarinas cut Peter short and told him to keep silent. Then, approaching Catherine, she whispered in her ear: “I still had many things to say to you, but I do not want to make things worse [with your husband] than they already are!”
“And I cannot tell you,” answered Catherine, “what an urgent desire I have to open to you my heart and my soul!”2 This time, it was the Empress whose eyes were filled with tears. She dismissed Catherine and the grand duke, and sat quietly a long time in front of Alexander Shuvalov, who in his turn came out from behind the folding screen. After a moment, she sent him to the grand duchess with a top secret commission: to urge her not to suffer any longer, pointlessly, for Her Majesty hoped to receive her soon for “a genuinely private conversation.”
This private conversation did, indeed, take place, in the greatest secrecy, and allowed the two women finally to explain themselves honestly. Did the empress demand, on that occasion, that Catherine provide full details on her liaisons with Sergei Saltykov and Stanislaw Poniatowski, on the exact parentage of Paul and Anna, on the unofficial household of Peter and the dreadful young Vorontsov, on Bestuzhev’s treason, Apraxin’s incompetence? In any event, Catherine found answers that alleviated Elizabeth’s anger, for the very next day she authorized her daughter-in-law to come to see her children in the imperial wing of the palace. During these wisely spaced visits, Catherine was able to observe how well-raised and well-educated were the cherubim, far from their parents.
With the help of these compromises, the grand duchess gave up her desperate plan to leave St. Petersburg to return to her family in Zerbst. Bestuzhev’s trial ended inconclusively, because of the lack of material evidence and the death of the principal witness, the Field Marshal Apraxin. Since, in spite of everything, some punishment must be given after so many abominable crimes
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Another Catherine! had been announced, Alexis Bestuzhev was exiled - not to Siberia, but to his own lands, where he would not want for anything.
The principal winner at the end of this legal struggle was Mikhail Vorontsov, who was offered the title of chancellor, replacing the disgraced Bestuzhev. Behind his back, the duke of Choiseul, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in France, savored his personal success. He knew that Vorontsov’s Francophile tendencies would lead him quite naturally to win over Catherine, and probably even Elizabeth, to side with Louis XV.
With regard to Catherine, he was not mistaken: anything that went against the tastes of her husband seemed salutary to her; with Elizabeth, things were less clear. She sought savagely to keep her free will, to obey only her own instinct. Moreover, the early military successes bolstered her hopes. Showing more resolve than Apraxin, General Fermor seized Konigsberg, besieged Kustrin, and was making progress in Pomerania. However, he was stopped outside of Zorndorf, in a battle that was so indecisive that both camps proclaimed victory. Certainly, the French victory in Crefeld, on the Rhine, by the count of Clermont, briefly dampened the Empress’s optimism. But experience had taught her that this kind of risk is inevitable in war and that it would be disastrous for Russia to lay down its weapons at the first sign of failure. Suspecting her allies of being less adamant than she in their bellicose intentions, she even declared to the ambassador of Austria, Count Esterhazy, that she would fight until the end, even if she had to “sell all her diamonds and half her dresses.”
According to the reports that Elizabeth received from the theater of operations, this patriotic disposition was shared by all the soldiers, of high rank or low. In the palaces, on the other hand, opinions were less certain. It was considered proper, in some Russian circles associated with the embassies, to show a certain independence of mind in this respect; this was considered
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Terrible Tsarinas having a “European” outlook. The mindset promulgated in foreign capitals and bolstered by international alliances between great families encouraged an elegant and tolerant lifestyle straddling several borders, so that certain courtiers scoffed at those who only wished for a solution that would be fundamentally Russian. First among the partisans of Frederick II was, as always, the Grand Duke Peter, who no longer hid his cards. He claimed to be communicating to the king of Prussia (through the intermediary of England’s new ambassador to St. Petersburg, George Keith, who had succeeded Williams) everything that the tsarina was saying in her secret war councils. Elizabeth did not want to believe that her nephew was receiving money as a price for his treason; but she was informed that Keith had received from his minister, Pitt (who also idolized the king of Prussia), instructions to encourage the grand duke to use all his influence with the empress to spare Frederick II from disaster.
Once upon a time, the Germanophiles could also count on Catherine and Poniatowski to support them. But, after the openhearted conversation that she had had with her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth felt sure that she had definitively defeated her. Folding in on herself, retreating inward to simmer over her sentimental sorrows, the young woman now spent her time only weeping and dreaming. Since she had voluntarily removed herself from the game board, she had lost any importance on the international level. To ensure that she had been rendered harmless, Elizabeth dispatched Stanislaw Poniatowski on a foreign mission. Her Majesty then went one step further and, asking him to relinquish his passport, let him know that henceforth his presence in St. Petersburg would be deemed undesirable.
After having disarmed her daughter-in-law, the Empress thought that she had only to disarm one other adversary, who was hateful in a different way: Frederick II. She was set against the
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Another Catherine! king of Prussia not only because he opposed her personal political views, but even more so because he had won over the heart of too many Russians, who were blinded by his insolence and his gleaming armor. Fortunately, Maria Theresa seemed as resolved as she to destroy the Germanic hegemony, and Louis XV, at the urging of Pompadour, it was said, was now engaging to reinforce the army he had launched against Frederick II’s troops. On December 30, 1759, a third treaty of Versailles renewed the second and guaranteed to Austria the restitution of all the territories that had been occupied during preceding campaigns. That should be enough, thought
