Vasilchikov, immediately began to flirt with Louise, the youngest of the visiting princesses. To Berlin, the Prussian minister described “the extraordinary attentions which Prince Orlov pays the landgravine and the freedom of manner with which he treats the princesses, especially the youngest one.”
The wedding of nineteen-year-old Paul and seventeen-year-old Natalia took place on September 29, 1773. It was followed by ten days of court balls, theatrical performances, and masquerades, while people in the streets drank free beer, ate hot meat pies, and watched fireworks soaring above the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress. Paul was exultant; a new life and a new freedom seemed to be offering itself. Natalia consoled herself because Andrei Razumovsky was always nearby.
As Paul’s wedding approached, Nikita Panin had been waging a battle to retain his influence over Paul and his wife-to-be. Catherine realized that, once married, Paul would become more independent of her; she was determined that, simultaneously, he also become more independent of Panin. Paul’s marriage would be both the pretext and the moment for severing this tie with Panin. With the loss of his role as tutor, however, Panin would be deprived of the base at court that entitled him to live at the palace and see his charge daily. He would no longer be able to influence Paul’s political views, which, Catherine believed, had helped steer her son toward what she regarded as an excessive admiration of Prussia and Frederick II.
Panin, who had held his position for thirteen years, was unprepared for this maneuver. Being governor and tutor to the heir to the throne gave him a commanding position in government and society. As the guardian of the physical well-being and the education of the future sovereign, he had chosen, directed, and dismissed tutors, librarians, doctors, and all servants at the grand ducal court. The establishment over which he presided had its own table, famous as one of the best in the city. There, Panin received guests every day—supposedly on behalf of the grand duke, who was present to listen—including senior state officials, court dignitaries, foreign guests, writers, scientists, and many of his own relatives. His position as tutor, in short, was the foundation of Panin’s political influence. To avoid jeopardizing it, he had always refused to accept any other official post. On assuming the real leadership of the College of Foreign Affairs in 1763, he remained only at the second level of rank, leaving the senior title to the largely absentee chancellor, Michael Vorontsov. Being in constant contact with the empress, Panin was also able to offer frequent counsel to her on personal subjects; a year before, in the autumn of 1772, he had helped Catherine break with Orlov by producing Vasilchikov. Given these many duties and services, he had believed himself invaluable and invulnerable.
Unfortunately for Panin, in May 1773 Orlov had returned to the capital and been readmitted to the council. There, he was eager to retaliate against Panin and assist Catherine in breaking the tutor’s hold on the grand duke. The result was that as Paul was about to be married, Panin was informed that the education of the grand duke was completed and that his mission as tutor was fulfilled. He responded by threatening to retire altogether to his estate near Smolensk if he were separated from Paul. Catherine, who did not wish to lose Panin completely, found a compromise. Panin would cease to be Paul’s tutor and give up administration of the grand ducal household. When he balked at vacating his rooms in the palace, Catherine announced that the rooms needed remodeling. To pacify Panin, she raised him to the equivalency in rank of the chancellor or a field marshal, and gave him the title of minister of Foreign Affairs. He was awarded a special grant of one hundred thousand rubles, an annual pension of thirty thousand rubles, and a salary of ten thousand rubles. Paul regretted the separation, but, caught up in his marriage to Natalia, he did not complain.
After the wedding, the empress told the landgravine that the new grand duchess was “a golden young woman” with whom her son appeared to be deeply in love. Over time and on closer examination, however, Catherine’s praise of her new daughter-in-law turned to irritation. She complained to Grimm:
Everything is done to excess with this lady. If she goes for a walk, it is for … [thirteen miles]; if she dances, it’s twenty quadrilles and as many minuets … in order to avoid the apartments being overheated, she has no fire lit in them at all … in short, the middle way is unknown here.… There is neither grace, nor prudence, nor wisdom in any of this and God knows what will become of her.… Just think that after more than a year and a half, she still doesn’t speak a word of the language.
With Potemkin, she shared a different complaint:
The grand duke … came to tell me himself that he and the grand duchess are in debt again.… He told me that her debt was from this, that, and the other thing to which I answered that she has an allowance, just as he does, like no one else in Europe; that this allowance is simply for clothing and passing fancies, but that the rest— servants, table, and carriage—is provided them.… I fear there will be no end to this.… If you count everything, then more than five hundred thousand has been expended on them during the year, and still they are in dire straits. But not a single thank you or a word of gratitude.
Catherine also heard rumors that Natalia’s relationship with Andrei Razumovsky had grown excessively warm. To her lectures to Paul on his wife’s extravagance, she added suggestions that he should keep an eye on her private behavior. Paul was aware that something was wrong. His marriage was a disappointment; his frivolous wife never encouraged his affection. But when his mother talked of sending Razumovsky away, Paul declared that he would never part with Andrei, his best friend, the person second only to his wife in his affections.
Catherine’s real complaint against Natalia was not financial, but that after two and a half years of marriage, her daughter-in-law showed no signs of producing an heir. These complaints were forgotten, however, when, in the fall of 1775, the grand duchess believed herself to be pregnant. “Her friends are, with reason, very anxious that she should prove so,” reported the British ambassador. A month later, it was officially announced that Natalia was pregnant; a baby was expected in the spring. By March 1776, Natalia’s pregnancy was proceeding so smoothly that the empress ordered wet nurses for the coming infant. Frederick II’s brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, was on his way from Berlin to be present at the important dynastic event.
At four on Sunday morning, April 10, Paul awakened his mother to tell her that his wife had been in labor since midnight. Catherine rose, put on a robe, and hurried to the bedside, and, although serious contractions had not yet begun, she stayed with the couple until ten in the morning. She left to be dressed and returned at noon, when the contractions became powerful and Natalia was in such pain that birth seemed imminent. But the afternoon and evening passed without result, and pain alternated with exhausted sleep. Monday was the same. On Tuesday, the midwife and doctors announced that there was no possibility of saving the child; all agreed that the baby was probably dead. On Wednesday, the thirteenth, they also despaired of saving the mother, and Natalia was given last rites. Toward six in the evening on Friday, April 15, after five days of agony, Natalia died.
Catherine and Paul had both remained with her through the five days. “Never in my life have I found myself in a more difficult, more hideous, more painful position,” the empress told Grimm. “For three days, I neither ate nor drank. There were moments when her suffering made me feel that my own body was being torn apart. Then I went stony. I, who am tearful by nature, saw her die, and never shed a tear. I said to myself, ‘If you cry, others will sob. If you sob, others will faint.’ ” Catherine’s anguish was magnified by the knowledge that her dead grandchild had been a “perfectly formed boy.” The autopsy revealed that the baby had been too large to pass through the birth canal; the cause was an inoperable malformation of the bone, which the empress was told would have prevented Natalia from ever giving birth to a living child. After the young woman’s body was opened after her death, Catherine reported that “it was found that there was only a space of four fingers’ breadth; the child’s shoulders were eight fingers wide.”
Despite fatigue, Catherine maintained her presence of mind. She had to; Paul, in a frenzy of grief, was refusing to allow his wife to be removed, and insisting on remaining beside her body. He did not attend the burial at Alexander Nevsky Monastery. His mother was accompanied by Potemkin and Gregory Orlov.
Beyond Natalia’s death and Paul’s uncontrolled grief, Catherine now faced the fact that three years of marriage and a pregnancy had produced no heir. Further, the grand duke’s emotional state was such that no one
