Zubov, increasingly desperate, tried to convince him to change his mind. Catherine, her family, and her court continued to wait.
Suspense filled the room. At first, Catherine was calm. Then, as time passed, her smile disappeared and her face became red. Nearby, her granddaughter was in tears. The hands of the clock passed nine and moved toward ten. At last the double doors opened. Zubov appeared and handed Catherine a paper. The king had changed his mind again. His last word was that he had given his word of honor that Alexandra would not be hindered in the practice of her religion, but that he would put nothing in writing and would not sign the marriage contract as long as it contained the clause Catherine demanded.
Catherine could scarcely believe what she was reading. Rising from her throne, she tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible. To some, it seemed that she was suffering from dizziness; others thought it was a mild stroke. The attack, whatever it was, was temporary, and, a minute later, she was able to announce, “His Majesty King Gustavus is not well. The ceremony is postponed.” She left the room on the arm of Alexander. Although the regent sent an apology for his nephew’s behavior, Catherine was shaken. The next morning she reappeared and spoke briefly to the regent and the king. The regent was in despair, but Gustavus, “stiff as a ramrod,” kept repeating, “What I have written, I have written. I will never change what I have written.”
Catherine refused to admit that a seventeen-year-old could defeat the empress of Russia in her own palace. More time, she decided, would overcome his stubbornness, and she insisted that Gustavus and his uncle remain in St. Petersburg for another two weeks. Gustavus agreed to an additional ten days but would not retreat from his position. In the end, there was no marriage.
Catherine’s humiliation and her effort to suppress her anger in public affected her health. Later, she learned that a strict Lutheran pastor had taught Gustavus that his subjects would never forgive him if he took a wife belonging to any but the Lutheran faith. Catherine also discovered that, during their long moments together, when the young king appeared to be wooing the young grand duchess, he was in fact attempting to convert her to Lutheranism. She wrote bitterly to Paul:
The fact is that the king pretended that Alexandra had promised him to change her religion and take the sacrament the Lutheran way and that she had given him her hand on it.… She told me with the candor and naivete natural to her how he had told her that on the coronation day she would have to take the [Luthernan] sacrament with him, and that she had replied, “Certainly, if I can, and if Grandmama consents.”
Alexandra, the bride-to-be, never completely recovered. After her grandmother’s death, her father, the new emperor, Paul, married her to a Hapsburg archduke. The marriage was unhappy, and at seventeen Alexandra died in childbirth. On November 1, 1796, Gustavus was crowned as King Gustavus IV. He subsequently married Princess Fredericka of Baden, a younger sister of Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the wife of Catherine’s grandson Alexander.
73
The Death of Catherine the Great
ON TUESDAY EVENING, November 4, 1796, Catherine appeared in public for the last time when a small number of close friends gathered at the Hermitage. One was Lev Naryshkin, who, more than forty years before, had been proposed, along with Sergei Saltykov, as a potential father of the child Catherine urgently needed to bear, and, subsequently, had meowed like a cat to spirit her out of the palace at night to visit her lover Poniatowski. Now, still playing the role of court jester, Lev, costumed as a peddler, shuffled up to Catherine with a tray full of toys and trinkets, pretending to hawk them. His performance made her shake with laughter. She retired early, explaining that she had laughed so hard that she needed to rest.
The next morning, November 5, she rose at six, drank black coffee, and sat down to write. At nine, she asked to be left alone for a moment and went into her dressing room. She did not reemerge. Her attendants waited. Her valet knocked, entered the room, and saw no one. He waited a minute, then pushed on the door of the adjacent water closet. It was partially jammed. He and a maid forced the door open and discovered the empress unconscious on the floor against the door. Her face was scarlet and her eyes were closed. When he gently raised her head, she issued a low groan. He called for help and with other servants managed to carry and drag her into her bedroom. There, finding her limp body too heavy to lift onto her high bed, they placed her on a leather mattress on the floor. Dr. Rogerson arrived and opened a vein in her arm.
The empress was alive, but her eyes were closed and she did not speak. The officials who gathered agreed to send urgently for Grand Duke Paul. Platon Zubov immediately sent his brother Nicholas galloping to Gatchina to notify Paul. Soon after, nineteen-year-old Alexander, in tears, asked Count Fyodor Rostopchin to go to Gatchina and officially inform his father of what had happened; Alexander wanted to assure Paul that no one—and certainly not he—thought of seizing the throne. Rostopchin followed Nicholas Zubov on the road to Gatchina.
Nicholas Zubov arrived at Gatchina at 3:45 p.m. with the news that Catherine had probably suffered a stroke. Paul ordered a sleigh and left immediately with Maria for St. Petersburg. At a staging post on the road, halfway to the capital, they met Rostopchin. The count later recalled:
The grand duke got out of his sleigh to satisfy a need of nature. I got out too and drew his attention to the beauty of the night. It was extremely calm and light … the moon was visible through the clouds, every sound was muffled and silence reigned.… I saw the grand duke fix his gaze on the moon; tears filled his eyes and flowed down his face.… I seized his hand. “My lord, what a moment this is for you!” He pressed my hand. “Wait, my dear friend, wait. I have lived forty-two years. Perhaps God will give me the strength and good sense to bear my appointed destiny.”
Paul and Maria arrived at the Winter Palace at 8:25 p.m. They were greeted by Alexander and Constantine, who had already changed into Prussian-style “Gatchina” uniforms with stiff, buttoned tunics and high boots. The grand duke found his mother lying on the leather mattress, motionless, her eyes closed. Kneeling, Paul kissed her hands. There was no response, and he and Maria sat down near her for the rest of the night.
Everywhere in the palace, the stricken woman became an object of pity and calculations. Would she recover? Would she at least regain consciousness long enough to disinherit Paul and name Alexander? Courtiers wondered whether to declare their allegiance. And to whom. And when. One who said nothing, sitting alone in a corner, shunned by everyone, was Platon Zubov.
The vigil lasted through the night. At dawn, the doctors told Paul that Catherine had suffered a stroke and that there was no hope. Paul sent for Bezborodko and told him to prepare a manifesto announcing his accession. At noon, the grand duke ordered Bezborodko to sort and seal the papers in his mother’s study under the supervision of his sons, then to lock the study and bring him the key. At five that afternoon, with Catherine struggling to breathe, Rogerson informed Paul that the end was near. Metropolitan Gavril administered the last rites, anointing Catherine with holy oil on the forehead, cheeks, mouth, breast, and hands.
Hours passed. No one spoke. At 9:45 on the night of November 6, 1796, thirty-six hours after she was stricken and without ever recovering consciousness, Catherine died. To courtiers assembled in an antechamber, an official announced, “Gentlemen, the Empress Catherine is dead and His Majesty Paul Petrovich has deigned to mount the throne of all the Russias.”
On November 8, two days after his mother’s death, the new emperor went to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, where the coffin of the man he believed was his father, Peter III, was opened. The body had not been embalmed, and the coffin contained only bones, dust, a hat, gloves, boots, and buttons. On December 2, a procession left the monastery to escort the coffin to the Winter Palace. Paul, his family,
