replacement.
With Russia defecting from the alliance and switching sides, France and Austria had no alternative except to negotiate with Prussia. The French were outraged. The Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV’s foreign minister, said to the Russian ambassador, “Sir, the maintenance of solemn engagements ought to override every other consideration.” Louis himself declared that while he was willing to listen to overtures for a durable and honorable peace, he must act in full accord with his allies; he would consider himself a traitor if he took part in secret negotiations; he would stain the honor of France if he deserted his allies. The result was a rupture of Russian diplomatic relations with France and the recall of ambassadors from both St. Petersburg and Paris.
Peter had provoked and insulted the Orthodox Church, infuriated and alienated the army, and betrayed his allies. Nevertheless, effective opposition still needed a specific cause around which to rally. Peter himself supplied this by endeavoring to impose on his exhausted country a frivolous new war—against Denmark.
As Duke of Holstein, Peter had inherited the grievances of his duchy against the Danish monarchy. In 1721, the small province of Schleswig, then a hereditary possession of the dukes of Holstein, had been seized and handed over to Denmark by England, France, Austria, and Sweden. No sooner was Peter on the Russian throne than he proceeded to insist upon “his rights.” As early as March 1, even before peace with Prussia was settled, he demanded to know whether Denmark was prepared to satisfy his claims to Schleswig; if not, he said he would be compelled to take extreme measures. The Danes proposed a conference and the English ambassador recommended negotiations; why should the mighty emperor of Russia make war with Denmark over a few villages? But everyone soon discovered that on the Holstein question, Peter meant to have his way and that even the advice of his new ally, Frederick of Prussia, was powerless to restrain him. Hitherto, Peter had proved pliable in Prussian hands; now even these hardheaded Germans learned about his obstinacy. Ultimately, on June 3, Peter agreed to a conference in Berlin to be mediated by Frederick, but he stipulated that the Russian propositions were to be regarded as an ultimatum to Denmark and that rejection meant war.
Redressing a perceived wrong against his duchy was one motive for provoking a war, but Peter had a second. Having idealized the warrior king of Prussia, having bragged that he had defeated “gypsies” when he was a boy in Kiel, having marched paste soldiers across a tabletop in a palace room and ordered real soldiers around a parade ground, he wanted now to be a hero on a real battlefield. Peter had just proclaimed to his allies and to Europe his passion for peace; now he was preparing to attack Denmark. The Russian army, deprived of its hard-won victory over Prussia, now learned that it was to spill its blood in a new campaign that had nothing to do with the interests of Russia.
Unable to dissuade Peter from undertaking this new war so soon after his accession, Frederick II urged his admirer to take precautions before his departure from Russia. “Frankly, I distrust these Russians of yours,” he said to Peter. “What if, during your absence, a cabal were formed to dethrone Your Majesty?” He advised Peter to have himself crowned and consecrated in Moscow before leaving, to lock up all unreliable persons, and to leave St. Petersburg garrisoned by his faithful Holsteiners. Peter refused to be persuaded; he saw no need. “If the Russians had wanted to do me harm,” he wrote to Frederick, “they could have done it long ago, seeing that I take no particular precautions, going freely about the streets on foot. I assure Your Majesty that when one knows how to deal with the Russians, one can be quite sure of them.”
A Russian army of forty thousand veterans was already assembled in occupied Prussian Pomerania, and Peter, without waiting to arrive himself, ordered these troops to advance. The Danes reacted by moving first and met the Russians in Mecklenburg. Then, to the astonishment of Danish commanders, the Russians in front of them began to retreat.
The riddle was solved a few days later. There had been a coup d’etat in St. Petersburg. Peter III had been overthrown, had abdicated, and was a prisoner. Peter’s wife, now styled Catherine II, had been proclaimed empress of Russia.
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NO ONE KNOWS EXACTLY when the plot to remove Peter III from the throne first took shape in Catherine’s mind. As Peter’s consort, she had become empress of Russia. Politically, however, this meant little; from the beginning of her husband’s reign, her position was one of isolation and humiliation. “It does not appear that the empress is much consulted,” Ambassador Keith reported to London, adding that he and his fellow diplomats “think it not the likeliest way of succeeding to make any direct or particular address to her Imperial Majesty.” Breteuil, the French ambassador, wrote, “The empress is abandoned to grief and dark forebodings. Those who know her say she is scarcely recognizable.”
Her position was particularly delicate since she was pregnant. With her physical activity severely restricted, there was little she could do to lead, or even encourage, the overthrow of her husband. The more she examined her situation, the greater appeared the risks, and she concluded that her best course was to withdraw completely from court life, do nothing, and wait to see how Peter managed his role as emperor. Catherine never gave up her ambition; instead, she simply allowed it to be guided by patience.
As she had imagined might happen, Peter’s errors and the insults he heaped upon her made her more popular. On February 21, Peter’s birthday, Catherine was forced to pin the ribbon of the Order of St. Catherine on Elizabeth Vorontsova’s gown, an honor previously conferred only on empresses and grand duchesses. Everyone understood that this was intended as a public insult to Catherine, and it won her increased sympathy. Breteuil, the French ambassador, wrote, “The empress bears the emperor’s conduct and the arrogance of Vorontsova nobly.” A month later he reported that she was “putting a manly face on her troubles; she is as much loved and respected as the emperor is hated and despised.” One factor in Catherine’s favor was that the court and the foreign ambassadors all regarded the emperor’s choice of a mistress—now the presumed empress-to-be—as farcical. Breteuil described Elizabeth Vorontsova as “having the appearance and manners of a pot-house wench.” Another observer described her “broad, puffy, pock-marked face and fat, squat, shapeless figure.” A third reported that “she was ugly, common and stupid.” Everyone who tried to understand her appeal to the emperor failed.
In her secluded apartment, Catherine’s third child, Gregory Orlov’s son, was born in secrecy on April 11. Named Alexis Gregorovich (son of Gregory) and later titled Count Bobrinksy, the infant was swaddled in soft beaver skin and spirited out of the palace to be cared for by the wife of Vasily Shkurin, Catherine’s faithful valet. Shkurin himself was responsible for the ruse that ensured that the birth would not be noticed. Knowing that the emperor loved fires, Shkurin waited until Catherine’s contractions became severe and then set fire to his own house in the city, trusting that Peter and many in the court would rush to watch the blaze. His guess was correct, the fire spread to other houses, and Catherine was left alone with a midwife to bear her child. She recovered quickly. Ten days later, in blooming health, she received dignitaries who came to pay their respects on her thirty-third birthday. Free of the pregnancy that had curtailed her ability to speak publicly and act, she told Count Mercy, the Austrian ambassador, that she heartily detested the new treaty her husband had made with their hated mutual enemy, Prussia.
Through May, tension mounted in St. Petersburg. Preparations for Peter’s Danish campaign went forward and some line regiments had moved to Narva, the first stage on the road to the battlefield. With every step in the direction of this unwanted war, resistance grew more intense. The Guards regiments, officers and men, tormented by increasing Prussian influence on their lives, were infuriated by the prospect of a distant, meaningless campaign against Denmark. Peter ignored their opposition.
The poisonous relationship between Peter and Catherine was made unmistakably clear at the end of April when Peter presided over a state banquet to celebrate the alliance with Prussia. Four hundred guests were in the hall. The emperor, wearing a blue Prussian uniform with the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle hanging from an orange ribbon around his neck, sat at the head of the table. The Prussian ambassador was on his right; Catherine was far away. Peter began by proposing three toasts. The first was to the health of the imperial family. The guests pushed
