emotionally tied to the Polish nobleman. She had written to him often as the father of her little Anna, and had tried to secure his recall as ambassador to St. Petersburg. Then she met Gregory Orlov, a man less polished but with greater self-assurance, strength, and drive. Catherine and Stanislaus still corresponded, and their letters were filled with mutual expressions of affection—indeed, the warmth of their language led Poniatowski to consider himself permanently bound to Catherine. The grand duchess, however, was not telling him the whole truth. She managed to omit from her letters details of her affair with Gregory Orlov, including her pregnancy and the birth of her child by Orlov. If Stanislaus learned about Gregory from other sources, he persuaded himself that this raw, uneducated soldier could not be anything more than an infatuation. And once Catherine had taken the throne and her husband was dead, he put Orlov out of his mind and counted the days until she called him back to her side.
Catherine, knowing or sensing his feelings, tried to warn him away. On July 2, 1762, she wrote to him:
I beg you most urgently not to come here as your arrival in the present circumstances would be dangerous for you and do me much harm. The revolution which has just taken place in my favor is miraculous. Its unanimity is unbelievable. I am deeply engaged in work and would be unable to devote myself to you. All my life I will serve and revere your family, but at the moment it is important not to arouse criticism. I have not slept for three nights and have eaten twice in four days. Good bye. Keep well, Catherine.
The note was affectionate, but it was written in an unmistakable tone of emotional disengagement. Her next letter, written a month later, was an account of the coup and the death of Peter III and included the announcement that she was sending Count Keyserling to make Stanislaus a king. By this point, it had become urgent that she stifle any hope that he would soon rejoin her as her lover and future husband:
I beg you not to come here now.… I received your letter. A regular correspondence would be subject to a thousand inconveniences. I have twenty thousand precautions to take and have no time for harmful little love letters.… I have thousands of proprieties to consider and also bear the burden of government.… Good bye, the world is full of strange situations.
She still said nothing about her intimate relationship with Gregory Orlov, but she did praise him and his four brothers:
[The coup was] in the hands of the brothers Orlov … [who] shone by their art of leadership, their prudent daring, by the care introduced in small details, by their presence of mind and authority.… Enthusiastically patriotic and honest, passionately attached to me and my friends … there are five of them in all … the eldest of whom [in fact, Gregory was the second] … used to follow me everywhere and committed innumerable follies.… His passion for me was openly acknowledged and that is why he undertook what he did.… I have great obligations to them.
These letters stunned Stanislaus. A desire to wear the Polish crown had never excited him. He did not want to be a king; he did not even wish to live in Poland. Considering himself a European sophisticate, he found that he had little in common with the rough, unruly Polish aristocracy, which rejected all authority except its own and would turn against any elected king at the first sign of a threat to its privileges. If he was to be near a throne, he saw himself more in the role of a prince consort, helping an empress to civilize her empire, than as the ruler of a country in which he had always felt a stranger. Accordingly, Catherine’s plan, which would have stranded him on a throne in Poland, had no appeal.
Catherine, however, had three reasons for terminating their personal relationship and making him king: she wanted to make certain that he was permanently disengaged from her personal life; this achieved, she wanted to compensate him for removing herself from his reach; and, more important, she wanted, through him, to dominate Poland. Her letters to her former lover grew cooler. She stopped making a secret of her relationship to Orlov. Stanislaus still believed that his physical presence would reignite her passion for him. He implored that he be allowed to come to Russia, at least for a few months, or even a few weeks. Catherine said no.
Stanislaus refused to accept or even to comprehend his rejection. In his mind, he still carried a picture of a lonely woman coping with the problems of an enormous empire, a woman who desperately needed his help. A more rational man might have seen that Catherine was telling him that she had another lover whose place in her life and contribution to her success had raised him far above himself. Only gradually, Stanislaus grasped this bitter fact, and that the crown of Poland was to be his consolation. He responded with a final, despairing cry:
I beg of you to listen to me. You, of all women, I never thought would change. Let me be with you in any capacity you will, only do not make me a king. Call me back to you. I will be able to render you far greater service as a private citizen. That any other woman could have changed, I would believe, but you, never! What is left for me? Life without you is nothing but an empty shell, emptiness and frightful weariness of heart. I beg of you to listen to me. Sophie, Sophie, you make me suffer terribly! I would a thousand times rather be an ambassador close to you than a king here.
His appeal was wasted. Catherine had made up her mind. It would be useful to have a man who loved her on the Polish throne, and it was even more convenient that this man was poor and that the Polish crown paid only a pittance. This would ensure that he would always need money and be dependent on her. Stanislaus, although wearing the robes of a king, would become a pawn on the Polish chessboard. The most powerful piece on the board would be a queen—in this case, an empress. Given her former lover’s submissive character and disinterest in the bruising business of royal politics, Catherine was certain that it would be only a matter of time before Poland fell completely under Russian influence.
When news of the Russian-Prussian decision in favor of Stanislaus traveled to foreign capitals, it was widely assumed that the empress wanted to make her former lover king of Poland in order to marry him later and then incorporate his kingdom into her empire. Although the announcement raised the danger of antagonizing both Austria and France, neither of these states—both, like Prussia, weakened by war—was prepared to fight over the Polish succession. This did not mean that they approved of Catherine’s plan. France lodged its protest through its ally, Turkey, Poland’s southern neighbor. French diplomats in Constantinople lost no time in pointing out to the sultan and the grand vizier the danger of having a young, unmarried man on the throne of Poland, one whom the Russian empress had already had as a lover and might well choose as a husband if the marriage settlement brought her territory west of the Dnieper. Skillfully planted, these anxieties quickly took root. In June 1764, the grand vizier sent a note to St. Petersburg declaring that his country was willing to recognize the Russo-Prussian alliance, and also to approve the election of a native king to the Polish throne, but objected to the person of Stanislaus on the grounds that he was too young, too inexperienced, and, above all, unmarried.
In Poland, the Czartoryskis, Stanislaus’s family, accepted the logic of Turkey’s objections. They proposed a solution: the king-to-be would marry, preferably a Polish Catholic girl—at thirty-two, he was well past the age when most eligible young noblemen were married. They pressed their nephew to do this before election day in the Diet. All parties—Catherine, his family, the Turks, and, behind them, the French—now had a common goal: to force Poniatowski to promise that he would marry only with the approval of the Diet and that he would select a Polish Catholic wife. Stanislaus refused, declaring that no one could force him to become king on these terms and that he would rather forfeit the crown.
Ultimately, it was Catherine who forced a decision on him. Stanislaus received an official message from the Russian foreign ministry in St. Petersburg telling him that it was essential that, before the opening of the election Diet, he marry, or at least select a bride. He realized that the message must have been approved by Catherine. Understanding, finally, that he had lost the woman he loved, he surrendered and signed a declaration that he would never marry anyone other than a Roman Catholic, and then only with the approval of the Polish Diet. He was
