At times, she regretted being an old woman and unable, in that condition, to command her regiments in person.
In reality, in spite of the shifting winds in war and politics, things were not going so badly for Russia. These disturbing events ruffled the surface of the water, but deeper down, a strong current was flowing right along, maintained by the usual paperpushing in the state offices, the harvests at the agricultural estates, the output of the factories, artisans’ workshops and public building sites, and the comings and goings of boats in the ports and caravans in the steppes, bringing their cargos of exotic goods.
This quiet agitation went on, like an anthill, in spite of the tumult at the top; and Elizabeth interpreted it as a sign of the extraordinary vitality of her people. Come what may, she thought, Russia is so vast, so rich in good land and courageous men that it can never perish. If one could cure it of its subservience to Prussian models, the game would be half-won already. For her part, she could take pride in having, in just a few years’ time, removed most of the Germans who had run the Administration. Whenever her advisers had suggested a foreigner for an important position, her invariable answer was, “Don’t we have a Russian to put there?”
This systematic preference quickly became known to her subjects and led to the arrival of new statesmen and military men, eager to devote themselves to the service of the empire.
While bringing new blood into the hierarchy of civil servants, the empress had also set about boosting the country’s economy by removing the internal customs system, instituting banks of credit like those in other European states, encouraging the
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Terrible Tsarinas colonization of the uncultivated plains of the southwest, creating the first secondary schools here and there, and founding the university in Moscow (to succeed the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy in that city) and the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Thus she maintained, against all the winds and tides, the trend of opening to the Western culture that Peter the Great had so urgently fostered, and without too much sacrificing the land’s traditions that were so cherished by the old nobility. While she recognized the defects of serfdom, she by no means planned to give up this secular practice. Let unrepentant utopians dream of a paradise where rich and poor, muzhiks and landowners, illiterate and erudite, blind and clear-sighted, young and old, minstrels and freaks would all have the same chance in life - she was too conscious of the harsh Russian reality to subscribe to such a mirage. On the other hand, whenever she found, within reach, an opportunity to extend the geographical limits of Russia, she became possessed, like a gambler at a betting table.
At the end of 1761, just when she was starting to doubt the abilities of her military chiefs, the fortress of Kolberg (in Pomerania) fell into the hands of the Russians. The attack was led by Rumiantsev, with a promising new general at his side - one Alexander Suvorov. This unhoped-for victory proved the empress right in holding out against the skeptics and the defeatists.
However, she hardly had the strength to enjoy the moment.
She had just spent a few weeks resting at Peterhof, but it had not brought her any relief. Returning to the capital, the satisfaction brought by her country’s military victory was soon effaced by the turmoil around her. She was haunted by the thought of death and caught up in rumors of dynastic intrigues, the grand duchess’s love scandals and the grand duke’s stupid, stubborn obsession with the triumph of Prussia. Shut up in her room, she suffered most of all from her legs, whose wounds bled in spite of every
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Another Catherine! remedy. Moreover, she was becoming prone to hemorrhages and crises of hysteria, which left her dazed for hours. Now, she would receive her ministers sitting up in bed, her hair capped with a lace bonnet. Sometimes, to cheer herself up, she would call in the mimes from an Italian troupe that she had invited to St. Petersburg; she would watch their pranks and think back to the time when such buffoons us ed to make her laugh.
As soon as she felt a little more puckish, she asked to have some of her most beautiful dresses brought in and, after pondering a bit, chose one; at the risk of splitting the seams, she had her chambermaids dress her, entrusted her coiffure to the hairdresser with instructions to give her the latest Parisian fashion, and announced her intention to appear at the next court ball. Then, planted in front of a mirror, she lost heart at the sight of her wrinkles, her sagging eyelids, her triple chin and the blotches on her cheeks; she had herself undressed, went back to bed, and resigned herself to ending her life in solitude, lethargy and memories.
Greeting the rare courtiers who came to visit her, she read in their eyes a suspicious curiosity, the cold impatience of the lookout on a watchtower. They may have had an affectionate look on their faces, but they weren’t coming to wish her well - they wanted to see how long she had left to live. Only Alexis Razumovsky seemed to really care. But what was he thinking about, as he looked at her? Of the loving and demanding woman whom he had held so often in his arms, or of the corpse that he would soon be strewing with flowers?
To the disastrous obsession with death, Elizabeth soon added a fear of fire. The old Winter Palace where the tsarina had lived in St. Petersburg since the beginning of her reign was an immense wooden construction that, at the least spark, would go up like a torch. If fire broke out in some recess of her apartments, she would lose all her furniture, all her holy images, all her dresses.
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Terrible Tsarinas And she would certainly not have time to escape, herself, but would perish in a blazing hell. Such disasters were, after all, frequent in the capital. She would have to summon up the courage to relocate. But to where? The construction of the new palace, which Elizabeth had entrusted to Rastrelli, was so far behind schedule that one could not hope to see an end to the work in less than two or three years. The Italian architect was asking for 380,000 rubles just to finish Her Majesty’s private apartments.
She did not have that kind of money, and she did not know where to find it. Maintaining the army was costing an arm and a leg.
Moreover, in June 1761, a fire had devastated the hemp and flax depots, destroying valuable goods that would have been sold to help replenish the State coffers.
To console herself for this penury and this typically Russian chaos, the tsarina went back to drinking great quantities of alcohol. When she had downed enough glasses, she would collapse in bed, sleeping like a beast. Her chambermaids watched over her while she rested; and she kept a special watchman, in addition - the spalnik, who was charged with checking her breathing, listening to her complaints and calming her fears whenever she began to wake up, between blackouts. To this good man, uneducated, naive and humble as a domestic animal, she no doubt entrusted the concerns that beset her as soon as she closed her eyes. All the family troubles simmered in her head together with the political intricacies, making an unpalatable stew. Chewing over old resentments and vain illusions, she hoped that at least death would hold off until s he signed a final agreement with the king of France.
That Louis XV should have spurned her as a fiancee when she was only fourteen years old and he was fifteen, s he could (if need be) understand. But that he should hesitate now to recognize her as a unique and faithful ally, when they were both at the height of their glory, surpassed understanding. That rogue, Frederick II,
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Another Catherine! would not be such a cad!
