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FAMOUS AFFINITIES OF HISTORY
THE ROMANCE OF DEVOTION
BY
LYNDON ORR
VOLUME II of IV.
CONTENTS
THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN THE STORY OF AARON BURR GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG
THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN
It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived wasin reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that thegreatest Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But theEmperor Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other insomething else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, madehimself so French in sympathy and understanding as to be able to playupon the imagination of all France as a great musician plays upon asplendid instrument, with absolute sureness of touch and an ability toextract from it every one of its varied harmonies. So the EmpressCatharine of Russia--perhaps the greatest woman who ever ruled anation--though born of German parents, became Russian to the core andmade herself the embodiment of Russian feeling and Russian aspiration.
At the middle of the eighteenth century Russia was governed by theEmpress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. In her own time, andfor a long while afterward, her real capacity was obscured by herapparent indolence, her fondness for display, and her seemingvacillation; but now a very high place is accorded her in the historyof Russian rulers. She softened the brutality that had reigned supremein Russia. She patronized the arts. Her armies twice defeated Frederickthe Great and raided his capital, Berlin. Had Elizabeth lived, shewould probably have crushed him.
In her early years this imperial woman had been betrothed to Louis XV.of France, but the match was broken off. Subsequently she entered intoa morganatic marriage and bore a son who, of course, could not be herheir. In 1742, therefore, she looked about for a suitable successor,and chose her nephew, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp.
Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so splendid afuture, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress next sought fora girl who might marry the young prince and thus become the futureCzarina. She thought first of Frederick the Great's sister; butFrederick shrank from this alliance, though it would have been of muchadvantage to him. He loved his sister--indeed, she was one of the fewpersons for whom he ever really cared. So he declined the offer andsuggested instead the young Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy ofAnhalt-Zerbst.
The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of thesemi-barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.
The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized,half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneerof French elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery andlust. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frederick the Great wasunwilling to have his sister plunged into such a life.
But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia ofAnhalt-Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young girlwillingly accepted, the more so as her mother practically commanded it.This mother of hers was a grim, harsh German woman who had reared herdaughter in the strictest fashion, depriving her of all pleasure with atruly puritanical severity. In the case of a different sort of girlthis training would have crushed her spirit; but the Princess Sophia,though gentle and refined in manner, had a power of endurance which wastoughened and strengthened by the discipline she underwent.
And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was taken byher mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the Lutheran faithand was received into the Greek Church, changing her name to Catharine.Soon after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter,and from that moment began a career which was to make her the mostpowerful woman in the world.
At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description ofCatharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; andher face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by thefact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair.Her complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. Shehad a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herselfwith such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though infact she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage herfigure was slight and graceful; only in after years did she becomestout. Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive,pure-minded German maiden, with a character well disciplined, andpossessing reserves of power which had not yet been drawn upon.
Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold hissister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case ofCatharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life whichmust have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mereboy in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of hisvices. Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged uponinsanity. Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperialaunt, he occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.
Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with anumber of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had beensoldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was hisdelight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats forvarious military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the dayor night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping ofthe curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by herhalf-idiot husband.
When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer andvodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and adebauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures couldbe heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathicperversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute andrepulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him withhorror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloatedface, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose anddistended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She wasscarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize uponhim and he would declare himself her slave, attending her at courtfunctions in the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotionfor his bride.
Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a longtime to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments shewould plead with him and strive to interest him in something betterthan his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter wasincorrigible. Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling,these never lasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into themost frantic excesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.
It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good senseshowed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She thereforegradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task ofdoing those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.
She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter theGreat none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried toforce upon the Russian people various forms of western civilizationwhich were alien to the national spirit. Peter t
he Great had striven tomake his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remainRussian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirredalways by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was theirown. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired theRussian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russiancostume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown ofgreen, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered withdiamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as weregifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favorof the common people.
It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman, escapedthe tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. Theinfidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothingas his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of characterand of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which theaverage Russian had no conception; and therefore it is not strange thatCatharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned tosome of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the halfimbecile to whom she had been married.
Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one shouldjudge very gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a lifewhence all the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several childrenbefore her thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubtexists as to their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were twowhose courage and virility specially attracted her. The one with whomher name has been most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and hisbrother, Alexis Orloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful inframe, suave in manner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocityslumbering underneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it wascurrently declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.
When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways hiselevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like thosewhich had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians havegiven him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with hisname; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about israther ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers,and had remained for several days drinking and carousing until hescarcely knew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer namedGudovitch, who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst intothe banquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame withindignation. Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone ofa battle trumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.
"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those whoreally wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate theglories of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn totake as your model? It will not be long before your people's love willbe changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy andsloth. Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others havegiven you so loyally!"
With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand twoproclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which hadbecome an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoringto the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.
The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared thebrain of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without readingthem, hastened at once to his great council, where he declared thatthey expressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg,and great was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had actedonly as any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger willthan his.
As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another ofthe wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policyof his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everythingthat was German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thusexciting the jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced Germanfashions. He boasted that his father had been an officer in thePrussian army. His crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached theutmost verge of sycophancy.
As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. Hedeclared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was reallyfathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned toCatharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possiblyforgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her highspirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; and atlast he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the CountessVorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.
It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for herpersonal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her owndefense. She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On theground of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right tomake complaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad.If he questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might takemeasures to imprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore sheconferred with the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conferencerapidly developed into a conspiracy.
The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter'sHolstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened earlyone morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.
"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed!"
Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to thebarracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling outthe Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man theyclashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediatelyafterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son;but as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as bythe soldiers, as empress in her own right.
It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. Thewretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance fromthe capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadtwould not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken toRopsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs,quite of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force acorrosive poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of buildand now quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloffseized him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled himtill the blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunateman was dead.
Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice saveto accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to theforeign ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violentcolic. When his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood issaid to have oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves thathad been placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; andsome six years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmostcomposure. The whole incident was characteristically Russian.
It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign ofCatharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of herstatecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire,and the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yetthese things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of thewoman whom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North." Becauseshe was so powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led inprivate a life which has been almost more exploited than her greatimperial achievements. And yet, though she had lovers whose names havebeen carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood--whichis to love deeply and intensely only once.
One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl,and when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself toGregory Orloff. She admired his s
trength, his daring, and hisunscrupulousness. But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came toseem almost more brute than man. She could not turn to him for any ofthose delicate attentions which a woman loves so much, nor for thatlarger sympathy which wins the heart as well as captivates the senses.A writer of the time has said that Orloff would hasten with equalreadiness from the arms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosedFinn or filthy Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he mightencounter in the streets.
It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperialguards there came to her notice another man who--as he proved in atrifling and yet most significant manner--had those traits which Orlofflacked. Catharine had mounted, man--fashion, a cavalry horse, and, witha helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. Atthat moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her,observed that her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at herside. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmetand fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and thisslight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercisedover his imperial mistress!
When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enrichedthem with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from thenuntil the day of his death he was more to her than any other man hadever been. With others she might flirt and might go even further thanflirtation; but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence,to give advice, or to direct her policies.
To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased herfor the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another;but to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm.There was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knew herhe was a man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after theirintimate acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles,while afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and inevery province of Greater Russia.
He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for merewealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the womanwhom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg,usually known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the mostsumptuous entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound withunusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drewforth a book she found to her surprise that its pages were Englishbank-notes. The pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, ofanother, notes on the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes somewere of solid gold, while others had pages of fine leather in whichwere set emeralds and rubies and diamonds and other gems. The storyreads like a bit of fiction from the Arabian Nights. Yet, after all,this was only a small affair compared with other undertakings withwhich Potemkin sought to please her.
Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empire byPotemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her newpossessions. A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore herdown the river Dnieper. The country through which she passed had been ayear before an unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinaryefforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities whichhad been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population whichswarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. Itwas only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood andcanvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming tohave solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, andbeautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought onso great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.
Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailingsuccess to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He washandsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect whichmatched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on theother hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man,she could turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, hecould understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thingthat woman yearns for most--a kindred spirit that can understandwithout the slightest need of explanation.
Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of thisgreat woman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, headingarmies or ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted witheven greater fondness than before. And it was this rather than hisvictories over Turk and other oriental enemies that made Catharinetrust him absolutely.
When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy andat a time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death cameupon him after he had fought against it with singular tenacity ofpurpose. Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he hadentertained her in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as evenRussia had never known before. Then he fell ill, though with highspirit he would not yield to illness. He ate rich meats and drank richwines and bore himself as gallantly as ever. Yet all at once death cameupon him while he was traveling in the south of Russia. His carriagewas stopped, a rug was spread beneath a tree by the roadside, and therehe died, in the country which he had added to the realms of Russia,
The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the fiveyears of life that still remained to her. The names of other men forwhom she had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this oneman lived in her heart in death as he had done in life.
Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, acreature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton andhave gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of thepalace kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhapsone finds the chief interest of her story to lie in this--that besidesbeing empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond allelse, at heart a woman.