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On the 12th of June, 1759, at two o'clock in the morning, the King of Prussia formed his troops in battle array, behind a forest which concealed his movements from the enemy. The battle was commenced with a fierce cannonade; and in the midst of the thunderings and carnage of this tempest of war, solid columns emerged from the ranks of the Prussians and pierced the Russian lines. The attack was too impetuous to be resisted. From post to post the Prussians advanced, driving the foe before them, and covering the ground with the slain. For six hours of almost unparalleled slaughter the victory was with the Prussians. Seventy-two pieces of cannon fell into the hands of the victors, and at every point the Russians were retreating. Frederic, in his exultation, scribbled a note to the empress, upon the field of battle, with the pommel of his saddle for a tablet, and dispatched it to her by a courier. It was as follows:

"Madam: we have beat the Russians from their entrenchments. In two hours expect to hear of a glorious victory."

But in less than two hours the tide of victory turned. The day was one of excessive heat. An unclouded sun poured its burning rays upon the field, and at midday the troops and the horses, having been engaged for six hours in one of the severest actions which was ever known, were utterly beat out and fainting with exhaustion. Just then the whole body of the Russian and Austrian cavalry, some fourteen thousand strong, which thus far had remained inactive, came rushing upon the plain as with the roar and the sweep of the whirlwind. The foe fell before them as the withered grass before the prairie fire. Frederic was astounded by this sudden reverse, and in the anguish of his spirit plunged into the thickest of the conflict. Two horses were shot beneath him. His clothes were riddled with balls. Another courier was dispatched to the empress from the sanguinary field, in the hottest speed. The note he bore was as follows:

"Remove from Berlin with the royal family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam, and the capital make conditions with the enemy."

As night approached, Frederic assembled the fragments of his army, exhausted and bleeding, upon some heights, and threw up redoubts for their protection. Twenty thousand of his troops were left upon the field or in the hands of the enemy. Every cannon he had was taken. Scarcely a general or an inferior officer escaped unwounded, and a large number of his most valuable officers were slain. It was an awful defeat and an awful slaughter.

Fortunately for Frederic the losses of the Russians had also been so terrible that they did not venture to pursue the foe. Early the next morning the Prussian king crossed the Oder; and the Russians, encumbered with the thousands of their own mutilated and dying troops, thought it not prudent to march upon Berlin. The war still raged furiously, the allies being inspirited by hope and Frederic by despair. At length the affairs of Prussia became quite hopeless, and the Prussian monarch was in a position from which no earthly energy or sagacity could extricate him. The Russians and Austrians, in resistless numbers, were spread over all his provinces excepting Saxony, where the great Frederic was entirely hemmed up.

The Prussian king was fully conscious of the desperation of his affairs, and, though one of the most stoical and stern of men, he experienced the acutest anguish. For hours he paced the floor of his tent, absorbed in thought, seldom exchanging a word with his generals, who stood silently by, having no word to utter of counsel or encouragement. Just then God mysteriously interposed and saved Prussia from dismemberment, and the name of her monarch from ignominy. The Empress of Russia had been for some time in failing health, and the year 1762 had but just dawned, when the enrapturing tidings were conveyed to the camp of the despairing Prussians that Elizabeth was dead. This event dispelled midnight gloom and caused the sun to shine brightly upon the Prussian fortunes.

The nephew of the empress, Peter III., who succeeded her on her throne, had long expressed his warm admiration of Frederic of Prussia, had visited his court at Berlin, where he was received with the most flattering attentions, and had enthroned the warlike Frederic in his heart as the model of a hero. He had even, during the war, secretly written letters to Frederic expressive of his admiration, and had communicated to him secrets of the Russian cabinet and their plans of operation. The elevation of Peter III. to the throne was the signal, not only for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Austrian alliance, but for the direct marching of those troops as allies into the camp of the Prussians. Thus sudden are the mutations of war; thus inexplicable are the combinations of destiny.

Elizabeth died in the fifty-second year of her age, after a reign of twenty years. She was during her whole reign mainly devoted to sensual pleasure, drinking intoxicating liquors immoderately, and surrendering herself to the most extraordinary licentiousness. Though ever refusing to recognize the claims of marriage, she was the mother of several children, and her favorites can not easily be enumerated. Her ministers managed the affairs of State for her, in obedience to her caprices. She seemed to have some chronic disease of the humane feelings which induced her to declare that not one of her subjects should during her reign be doomed to death, while at the same time, with the most gentle self complacency, she could order the tongues of thousands to be torn out by the roots, could cut off the nostrils with red hot pincers, could lop off ears, lips and noses, and could twist the arms of her victims behind them, by dislocating them at the shoulders. There were tens of thousands of prisoners thus horridly mutilated.

The empress was fond of music, and introduced to Russia the opera and the theater. She was as intolerent to the Jews as her father had been, banishing them all from the country. She lived in constant fear of conspiracies and revolutions, and, as a desperate safeguard, established a secret inquisitorial court to punish all who should express any displeasure with the measures of government. Spies and informers of the most worthless character filled the land, and multitudes of the most virtuous inhabitants of the empire, falsely accused, or denounced for a look, a shrug, or a harmless word, were consigned to mutilation more dreadful and to exile more gloomy than the grave.

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CHAPTER XXIII
PETER III. AND HIS BRIDE

From 1728 to 1762

Lineage of Peter III.—Chosen by Elizabeth as Her Successor.—The Bride Chosen for Peter.—Her Lineage.—The Courtship.—The Marriage.—Autobiography of Catharine.—Anecdotes of Peter.—His Neglect of Catharine and His Debaucheries.—Amusements of the Russian Court.—Military Execution of a Rat.—Accession of Peter III. to the Throne.—Supremacy of Catharine.—Her Repudiation Threatened.—The Conspiracy.—Its Successful Accomplishment.

Peter the Third was grandson of Peter the Great. His mother, Anne, the eldest daughter of Peter and Catharine, married the Duke of Holstein, who inherited a duchy on the eastern shores of the Baltic containing some four thousand square miles of territory and about three hundred thousand inhabitants. Their son and only child, Peter, was born in the ducal castle at Kiel, the capital of the duchy, in the year 1728. The blood of Peter the Great of Russia, and of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden mingled in the veins of the young duke, of which fact he was exceedingly proud. Soon after the birth of Peter, his mother, Anne, died. The father of Peter was son of the eldest sister of Charles XII., and, as such, being the nearest heir, would probably have succeeded to the throne of Sweden had not the king's sudden death, by a cannon ball, prevented him from designating his successor. The widowed father of Peter, thus disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the crown of Sweden, which his aunt Ulrica, his mother's sister, successfully grasped, lived in great retirement. The idea had not occurred to him that the crown of imperial Russia could, by any chance, descend to his son, and the education of Peter was conducted to qualify him to preside over his little patrimonial duchy.

When young Peter was fourteen years of age, the Empress Elizabeth, his maternal aunt, to the surprise and delight of the family, summoned the young prince to St. Petersburg, intimating her intention to transmit to him her crown. But Peter was a thoroughly worthless boy. All ignoble qualities seemed to be combined in his nature without any redeeming virtues. Elizabeth having thus provided twenty millions of people with a sovereign, looked about to find for that sovereign a suitable wife. Upon the banks of the Oder there was a small principality, as it was called, containing some thirteen hundred square miles, about the size of the State of Rhode Island. Christian Augustus, the prince of this little domain, had a daughter, Sophia, a child rather remarkable both for beauty and vivacity. She was one year younger than Peter, and Elizabeth fixed her choice upon Sophia as the future spouse of her nephew. Peter was, at this time, with the empress in Moscow, and Sophia was sent for to spend some time in the Russian capital before the marriage, that she might become acquainted with the Russian language and customs.

Both of these children had been educated Protestants, but they were required to renounce the Lutheran faith and accept that of the Greek church. Children as they were, they did this, of course, as readily as they would have changed their dresses. With this change of religion Sophia received a new name, that of Catharine, and by this name she was ever afterward called. When these children, to whom the government of the Russian empire was to be intrusted, first met, Peter was fifteen years of age and Catharine fourteen. Catharine subsequently commenced a minute journal, an autobiography of these her youthful days, which opens vividly to our view the corruptions of the Russian court. Nothing can be more wearisome than the life there developed. No thought whatever seemed to be directed by the court to the interests of the Russian people. They were no more thought of than the jaded horses who dragged the chariots of the nobles. It is amazing that the indignation of the millions can have slumbered so long.

Catharine, in her memoirs, naively describes young Peter, when she first saw him, as "weak, ugly, little and sickly." From the age of ten he had been addicted to intoxicating drinks. It was the 9th of February, 1744, when Catharine was taken to Moscow. Peter, or, as he was then called, the grand duke, was quite delighted to see the pretty girl who was his destined wife, and began immediately to entertain Catharine, as she says, "by informing me that he was in love with one of the maids of honor to the empress, and that he would have been very glad to have married her, but that he was resigned to marry me instead, as his aunt wished it."

The grand duke had the faculty of making himself excessively disagreeable to every one around him, and the affianced haters were in a constant quarrel. Peter could develop nothing but stupid malignity. Catharine could wield the weapons of keen and cutting sarcasm, which Peter felt as the mule feels the lash. Catharine's mother had accompanied her to Moscow, but the bridal wardrobe, for a princess, was extremely limited.

"I had arrived," she writes, "in Russia very badly provided for. If I had three or four dresses in the world, it was the very outside, and this at a court where people changed their dress three times a day. A dozen chemises constituted the whole of my linen, and I had to use my mother's sheets."

Soon after Catharine's arrival, the grand duke was taken with the small-pox, and his natural ugliness was rendered still more revolting by the disfigurement it caused. On the 10th of February, 1745, when Catharine had been one year at Moscow, the grand duke celebrated his seventeenth birthday. In her journal Catharine writes that Peter seldom saw her, and was always glad of any excuse by which he could avoid paying her any attention. Though Catharine cared as little for him, still, with girlish ambition, she was eager to marry him, as she very frankly records, in consideration of the crown which he would place upon her brow, and her womanly nature was stung by his neglect.

"I fully perceived," she writes, "his want of interest, and how little I was cared for. My self-esteem and vanity grieved in silence; but I was too proud to complain. I should have thought myself degraded had any one shown me a friendship which I could have taken for pity. Nevertheless I shed tears when alone, then quietly dried them up, and went to romp with my maids.

"I labored, however," writes Catharine, "to gain the affection of every one. Great or small I neglected no one, but laid it down to myself as a rule to believe that I stood in need of every one, and so to act, in consequence, as to obtain the good will of all, and I succeeded in doing so."

The 21st of August of this year was fixed for the nuptial day. Catharine looked forward to it with extreme repugnance. Peter was revolting in his aspect, disgusting in manners, a drunkard, and licentious to such a degree that he took no pains to conceal his amours. But the crown of Russia was in the eyes of Catharine so glittering a prize, though then she had not entered her sixteenth year, that she was willing to purchase it even at the price of marrying Peter, the only price at which it could be obtained. She was fully persuaded that Peter, with a feeble constitution and wallowing in debauchery, could not live long, and that, at his death, she would be undisputed empress.

"As the day of our nuptials approached," she writes, "I became more and more melancholy. My heart predicted but little happiness; ambition alone sustained me. In my inmost soul there was something which led me never to doubt, for a single moment, that sooner or later I should become sovereign empress of Russia in my own right."

The marriage was celebrated with much pomp; but a more cold and heartless union was perhaps never solemnized. Catharine very distinctly intimates that her husband, who was as low in his tastes and companionship as he was degraded in his vices, left her at the altar, to return to his more congenial harem.

"My beloved spouse," she writes, "did not trouble himself in the slightest degree about me; but was constantly with his valets, playing at soldiers, exercising them in his room, or changing his uniform twenty times a day. I yawned and grew weary, having no one to speak to."

Again she writes, "A fortnight after our marriage he confessed to me that he was in love with Mademoiselle Carr, maid of honor to her imperial majesty. He said that there was no comparison between that lady and me. Surely, said I to myself, it would be impossible for me not to be wretched with such a man as this were I to give way to sentiments of tenderness thus requited. I might die of jealousy without benefit to any one. I endeavored to master my feelings so as not to be jealous of the man who did not love me. I was naturally well-disposed, but I should have required a husband who had common sense, which this one had not."

For amusement, the grand duke played cruelly with dogs in his room, pretending to train them, whipping them from corner to corner. When tired of this he would scrape execrably on a violin. He had many little puppet soldiers, whom, hour after hour, he would marshal on the floor in mimic war. He would dress his own servants and the maids of Catharine in masks, and set them dancing, while he would dance with them, playing at the same time on the fiddle.

"With rare perseverance," writes Catharine, "the grand duke trained a pack of dogs, and with heavy blows of his whip, and cries like those of the huntsmen, made them fly from one end to the other of his two rooms, which were all he had. Such of the dogs as became tired, or got out of rank, were severely punished, which made them howl still more. On one occasion, hearing one of these animals howl piteously and for a long time, I opened the door of my bed-room, where I was seated, and which adjoined the apartment in which this scene was enacted, and saw him holding this dog by the collar, suspended in the air, while a boy, who was in his service, a Kalmuck by birth, held the animal by the tail. It was a poor little King Charles spaniel, and the duke was beating him with all his might with the heavy handle of a whip. I interceded for the poor beast; but this only made him redouble his blows. Unable to bear so cruel a scene, I returned to my room with tears in my eyes. In general, tears and cries, instead of moving the duke to pity, put him in a passion. Pity was a feeling that was painful and even insupportable in his mind."

At one time there was a little hunchback girl in the court, upon whom the duke fixed his vagrant desires, and she became his unconcealed favorite. The duke was ever in the habit of talking freely with Catharine about his paramours and praising their excellent qualities.

"Madame Vladisma said to me," writes Catharine, "that every one was disgusted to see this little hunchback preferred to me. 'It can not be helped,' I said, as the tears started to my eyes. I went to bed; scarcely was I asleep, when the grand duke also came to bed. As he was tipsy and knew not what he was doing, he spoke to me for the purpose of expatiating on the eminent qualities of his favorite. To check his garrulity I pretended to be fast asleep. He spoke still louder in order to wake me; but finding that I slept, he gave me two or three rather hard blows in the side with his fist, and dropped asleep himself. I wept long and bitterly that night, as well on account of the matter itself and the blows he had given me, as on that of my general situation, which was, in all respects, as disagreeable as it was wearisome."

One of the ridiculous and disgraceful amusements of the vulgar men and women collected in the court of Elizabeth, was what was called masquerade balls, in which all the men were required to dress as women, and all the women as men, and yet no masks were worn.

"The men," Catharine writes, "wore large whaleboned petticoats, with women's gowns, and the head-dresses worn on court days, while the women appeared in the court costume of men. The men did not like these reversals of their sex, and the greater part of them were in the worst possible humor on these occasions, because they felt themselves to be hideous in such disguises. The women looked like scrubby little boys, while the more aged among them had thick short legs which were any thing but ornamental. The only woman who looked really well, and completely a man, was the empress herself. As she was very tall and somewhat powerful, male attire suited her wonderfully well. She had the handsomest leg I have ever seen with any man, and her foot was admirably proportioned. She danced to perfection, and every thing she did had a special grace, equally so whether she dressed as a man or a woman."

Enervating and degrading pleasure and ambitious or revengeful wars, engrossed the whole attention of the Russian court during the reign of Elizabeth. The welfare of the people was not even thought of. The following anecdote, illustrative of the character of Peter III., is worthy of record in the words of Catharine:

"One day, when I went into the apartments of his imperial highness, I beheld a great rat which he had hung, with all the paraphernalia of an execution. I asked what all this meant. He told me that this rat had committed a great crime, which, according to the laws of war, deserved capital punishment. It had climbed the ramparts of a fortress of card-board, which he had on a table in his cabinet, and had eaten two sentinels, made of pith, who were on duty in the bastions. His setter had caught the criminal, he had been tried by martial law and immediately hung; and, as I saw, was to remain three days exposed as a public example. In justification of the rat," continues Catharine, "it may at least be said, that he was hung without having been questioned or heard in his own defense."

It is not surprising that a woman, young, beautiful and vivacious, living in a court where corruption was all around her, where an unmarried empress was rendering herself notorious by her gallantries, stung to the quick by the utter neglect of her husband, insulted by the presence of his mistresses, and disgusted by his unmitigated boobyism, should have sought solace in the friendship of others. And it is not strange that such friendships should have ripened into love, and that one thus tempted should have fallen. Catharine in her memoirs does not deny her fall, though she can not refrain from allowing an occasional word to drop from her pen, evidently intended in extenuation. Much which is called virtue consists in the absence of temptation.

Catharine's first son, Paul, was born on the 20th of September, 1753. He was unquestionably the son of Count Sottikoff, a nobleman alike distinguished for the graces of his person and of his mind. Through a thousand perils and cunning intrigues, Catharine and the count prosecuted their amour. Woe was, as usual, to both of them the result. The empress gives a very touching account of her sufferings, in both body and mind, on the occasion of the birth of her child.

"As for me," she writes, "I did nothing but weep and moan in my bed. I neither could or would see anybody, I felt so miserable. I buried myself in my bed, where I did nothing but grieve. When the forty days of my confinement were over, the empress came a second time into my chamber. My child was brought into my room; it was the first time I had seen him since his birth."

One day Peter brought into his wife's room, for her amusement, a letter which he had just received from one of his mistresses, Madame Teploff. Showing the letter to Catharine, he said,

"Only think! she writes me a letter of four whole pages, and expects that I should read it, and, what is more, answer it also; I, who have to go to parade, then dine, then attend the rehearsal of an opera, and the ballet which the cadets will dance at. I will tell her plainly that I have not time, and, if she is vexed, I will quarrel with her till next winter."

"That will certainly be the shortest way," Catharine coolly replied. "These traits," she very truly adds in her narrative, "are characteristic, and they will not therefore be out of place."

Such was the man and such the woman who succeeded to the throne of Russia upon the death of the Empress Elizabeth. She had hardly emitted her last breath, ere the courtiers, impatiently awaiting the event, rushed to the apartments of the grand duke to congratulate him upon his accession to the crown. He immediately mounted on horseback and traversed the streets of St. Petersburg, scattering money among the crowd. The soldiers gathered around him exclaiming, "Take care of us and we will take care of you," Though the grand duke had been very unpopular there was no outburst of opposition. The only claim Peter III. had to the confidence of the nation was the fact that he was grandson of Peter the Great. Conspiracies were, however, immediately set on foot to eject him from the throne and give Catharine his seat. Catharine had a high reputation for talent, and being very affectionate in her disposition and cordial in her manners, had troops of friends. Indeed, it is not strange that public sentiment should not only have extenuated her faults, but should almost have applauded them. Forgetting the commandments of God, and only remembering that her brutal husband richly merited retaliation, the public almost applauded the spirit with which she conducted her intrigues. The same sentiment pervaded England when the miserable George IV. goaded his wife to frenzy, and led her, in uncontrollable exasperation, to pay him back in his own coin.

Fortunately for the imbecile Peter, he had enough sense to appreciate the abilities of Catharine; and a sort of maudlin idea of justice, if it were not, perhaps, utter stupidity, dissuaded him from resenting her freedom in the choice of favorites. Upon commencing his reign, he yielded himself to the guidance of her imperial mind, hoping to obtain some dignity by the renown which her measures might reflect upon him. Catharine advised him very wisely. She caused seventeen thousand exiles to be recalled from Siberia, and abolished the odious secret court of chancery—that court of political inquisition which, for years, had kept all Russia trembling.

For a time, Russia resounded with the praises of the new sovereign, and when Peter III. entered the senate and read an act permitting the nobility to bear arms, or not, at their own discretion, and to visit foreign countries whenever they pleased, a privilege which they had not enjoyed before, the gratitude of the nobles was unbounded. It should, however, be recorded that this edict proved to be but a dead letter. It was expected that the nobles, as a matter of courtesy, should always ask permission to leave, and this request was frequently not granted. The secret tribunal, to which we have referred, exposed persons of all ranks and both sexes to be arrested upon the slightest suspicion. The accused was exposed to the most horrible tortures to compel a confession. When every bone was broken and every joint dislocated, and his body was mangled by the crushing wheel, if he still had endurance to persist in his denial, the accuser was, in his turn, placed upon the wheel, and every nerve of agony was tortured to force a recantation of the charge.

Though Peter III. promulgated the wise edicts which were placed in his hands, he had become so thoroughly imbruted by his dissolute life that he made no attempt to tear himself away from his mistresses and his drunken orgies.

Peter III. was quite infatuated in his admiration of Frederic of Prussia. One of his first acts upon attaining the reins of government was to dispatch an order forbidding the Russian armies any longer to coöperate with Austria against Prussia. This command was speedily followed by another, directing the Russian generals to hold themselves and their troops obedient to the instructions of Frederic, and to coöperate in every way with him to repel their former allies, the Austrians. It was the caprice of a drunken semi-idiot which thus rescued Frederic the Great from disgrace and utter ruin. The Emperor of Prussia had sufficient sagacity to foresee that Peter III. would not long maintain his seat upon the throne. He accordingly directed his minister at St. Petersburg, while continuing to live in great intimacy with the tzar, to pay the most deferential attention to the empress.

There was no end to the caprices of Peter the drunkard. At one time he would leave the whole administration of affairs in the hands of Catharine, and again he would treat her in the most contemptuous and insulting manner. In one of the pompous ceremonials of the court, when the empress, adorned with all the marks of imperial dignity, shared the throne with Peter, the tzar called one of his mistresses to the conspicuous seat he occupied with the empress, and made her sit down by his side. Catharine immediately rose and retired. At a public festival that same evening, Peter, half drunk, publicly and loudly launched at her an epithet the grossest which could be addressed to a woman. Catharine was so shocked that she burst into tears. The sympathy of the spectators was deeply excited in her behalf, and their indignation roused against the tzar.

While Peter III. was developing his true character of brute and buffoon, gathering around him the lowest profligates, and reveling in the most debasing and vulgar vices, Catharine, though guilty and unhappy, was holding her court with dignity and affability, which charmed all who approached her. She paid profound respect to the external observances of religion, daily performing her devotions in the churches, accosting the poor with benignity, treating the clergy with marked respect, and winning all hearts by her kindness and sympathy.

One of the mistresses of Peter III., the Countess Vorontzof, had gained such a boundless influence over her paramour, that she had extorted from him the promise that he would repudiate Catharine, marry her, and crown her as empress. Elated by this promise, she had the imprudence to boast of it. Her father and several of the courtiers whose fortunes her favor would secure, were busy in paving her way to the throne. The numerous friends of Catharine were excited, and were equally active in thwarting the plans of the tzar. Peter took no pains to conceal his intentions, and gloried in proclaiming the illegitimacy of Paul, the son of the empress. Loathsome as his own life was, he seemed to think that his denunciations of Catharine, whose purity he had insulted and whose heart he had crushed, would secure for him the moral support of his subjects and of Europe. But he was mistaken. The sinning Catharine was an angel of purity compared with the beastly Peter.

It was necessary for Peter to move with caution, for Catharine had ability, energy, innumerable friends, and was one of the last women in the world quietly to submit to be plunged into a dungeon, and then to be led to the scaffold, and by such a man as her despicable spouse. Peter III. was by no means a match for Catharine. About twelve miles from St. Petersburg, on the southern shore of the Bay of Cronstadt, and nearly opposite the renowned fortresses of Cronstadt which command the approaches to St. Petersburg, was the imperial summer palace of Peterhof, which for some time had been the favorite residence of Catharine. A few miles further down the bay, which runs east and west, was the palace of Oranienbaum, in the decoration of which many succeeding monarchs had lavished large sums. This was Peter's favorite resort, and its halls ever echoed with the carousings of the prince and his boon companions. Every year, on the 8th of July, there is a grand festival at Peterhof in honor of Peter and Paul, the patron saints of the imperial house. This was the time fixed upon by Catharine and her friends for the accomplishment of their plans. The tzar, on the evening of the 8th of July, was at Oranienbaum, surrounded by a bevy of the most beautiful females of his court. Catharine was at Peterhof. It was a warm summer's night, and the queen lodged in a small cottage orné called Montplaisir, which was situated in the garden. They had not intended to carry their plot into execution that night, but an alarm precipitated their action. At two o'clock in the morning Catharine was awoke from a sound sleep, by some one of her friends entering her room, exclaiming,