Catherine the Great

  35

  Apraksin’s Retreat

  RUSSIA, bound by her alliance with Austria, had been nominally at war with Prussia since September 1756, when Frederick invaded Saxony. By late spring of 1757, however, not a single Russian soldier had marched. It was the first war of Elizabeth’s reign, and the victories of her father, Peter the Great, almost four decades earlier, had faded from Russian memory. No money had been spent on the army, and the troops were badly trained and poorly equipped. Morale was low, not only because Elizabeth had promised to send this army against Frederick, the foremost general of the age, but also because the empress’s declining health meant that the Russian crown might soon be placed on the head of a young man who was King Frederick of Prussia’s fervent admirer.

  In the months before the war, Bestuzhev had promoted a friendship between Catherine and his own friend General Stepan Apraksin. A descendant of Peter the Great’s most succesful admiral, Apraksin was described by Hanbury-Williams as “a very corpulent man, lazy, and good-natured.” His friendship with the chancellor, rather than his military skill, had earned him command of the army being assembled to invade East Prussia. Once appointed, Apraksin had refused to embark on a winter campaign. He had political as well as military reasons for his caution. The empress’s uncertain health and the grand duke’s pro-Prussian sentiments made it obvious that the war would end as soon as Peter came to the throne. In these circumstances, even an aggressive general might be forgiven for not risking his own future by plunging ahead. Apraksin might also be excused for uneasiness about Catherine. She was born a German; Frederick had helped arrange her marriage; and her mother had been widely suspected of being a Prussian agent. In this reasoning, he was wrong. Catherine, now caught up in the politics of the Russian court, hoped for a Russian victory that would restore Bestuzhev’s prestige and prevent the final triumph of his and her mutual enemies, the Shuvalovs. Before Apraksin left to invade East Prussia, Catherine tried to make certain that he knew her views. When the general’s wife came to see her, Catherine spoke of her own worries about the empress’s health and said that she greatly regretted the departure of Apraksin at a time when she thought little reliance could be placed on the Shuvalovs. Apraksin’s wife repeated this to her husband, who was pleased and passed the grand duchess’s words along to Bestuzhev.

  In mid-May 1757, the portly, red-faced field soldier, physically unable to mount a horse, climbed into his carriage and set out for East Prussia at the head of eighty thousand men. At the end of June, the army seized the fortress town of Memel, on the Baltic coast. On August 17, Apraksin defeated a part of the Prussian army in a battle at Grossjägersdorf, in East Prussia. It was not a brilliant victory; Frederick was not present and the Russians outnumbered their enemies by three to one. Even so, Russian national pride and expectations soared. Then, a strange thing happened. Instead of following up his victory by advancing into East Prussia and capturing Königsberg, the provincial capital, Apraksin remained motionless for two weeks, after which he turned around and retreated by forced marches so precipitous that his withdrawal appeared to be a rout. He burned his wagons and ammunition, destroyed his stores and powder, spiked and abandoned his cannon, and burned villages behind him so they could provide no shelter for a pursuing enemy. He halted only when he reached the safety of the fortress of Memel.

  In St. Petersburg, elation turned to shock. The public could not understand what had happened, and Apraksin’s friends could find no way to justify his behavior. Catherine could not explain the marshal’s chaotic retreat, but she speculated that he may have been receiving alarming news about the empress’s health. If this were true and Elizabeth were to die, her death would signal an immediate end to the war. He would be needed in Russia, and, rather than advancing farther into Prussia, his duty would be to fall back to the Russian frontier.

  Apraksin’s retreat provoked angry complaints from the Austrian and French ambassadors. Bestuzhev was alarmed. Because Apraksin was his friend and had received command of the army from him, the chancellor knew that he would bear a share of blame. Faced with the political necessity of a renewed offensive, which would restore Russia’s prestige among her allies and his own with the empress, he asked Catherine to write to the general. Catherine did so, warning Apraksin of the harmful rumors circulating in Petersburg and of the difficulty his friends were having in explaining his retreat. She begged him to retrace his steps, resume his advance, and carry out his orders from the government. Ultimately, she wrote three letters, all harmless, although later they were to be produced as evidence that the grand duchess was interfering in matters beyond her concern. Bestuzhev forwarded these letters to Apraksin. The letters were never answered.

  Meanwhile, St. Petersburg was a cauldron of recrimination. Elizabeth, pressed by the Shuvalovs and the French ambassador, relieved Apraksin of his command, and sent him to one of his estates to await investigation. General Wilhelm Fermor took over the army, and, despite bad weather, moved forward and seized Königsberg on January 18, 1758. Fermor also tried to clear his predecessor by pointing out that, through no fault of Apraksin’s, the Russian soldiers had not been paid, that they were short of ammunition, weapons, and clothing, and that the men were desperately hungry. With endurance and courage, they had defeated the Prussians at Grossjägersdorf, but the effort had proved too much, and Apraksin, unable to supply his troops in enemy territory, had been compelled to retreat.

  Fermor’s account was only partially accurate. The decision to retreat had not been made by Apraksin. After the victory at Grossjägersdorf, the general had informed the war council in St. Petersburg of the problems he and the army faced. The council had met three times—on August 27, September 13, and September 28, 1757—and had ordered Apraksin to withdraw. These facts had been withheld from Vienna, Paris, and the people of St. Petersburg. Elizabeth had concurred in this withdrawal but never admitted it. Catherine had not known.

  On September 8, at Tsarskoe Selo, Elizabeth went on foot from the palace to attend Mass at the parish church near the palace gate. Scarcely had the service begun when, feeling unwell, she left the church, descended a short flight of steps, staggered, and collapsed unconscious on the grass. The empress’s attendants, following behind, found her surrounded by a crowd of people who had come from nearby villages to hear Mass. At first, no one knew what was wrong. The attendants covered her with a white cloth, and members of the court went to look for a doctor and a surgeon. The first to arrive was a surgeon, a French refugee, who bled her while she lay unconscious on the ground in the middle of the crowd. The treatment failed to revive her. The doctor, a Greek, took longer to arrive; being himself unable to walk, he had to be carried to her in an armchair. Screens and a couch were brought from the palace. Placed on the couch behind the screens, Elizabeth stirred and opened her eyes but did not recognize anyone and spoke unintelligibly. After two hours, she was carried on the couch into the palace. The consternation of the court, already immense, was increased by the fact that the collapse had occurred in public. Until then, the state of the empress’s health had been a tightly kept secret. Suddenly, it was public knowledge.

  Catherine learned of the incident the following morning at Oranienbaum from a note sent by Poniatowski. She hurried to tell Peter. A messenger, sent to ask for more news, returned with the information that Elizabeth was able to speak only with difficulty. Everyone realized that something more serious than a fainting spell had happened; today we might realize that Elizabeth had suffered a stroke.

  After Elizabeth’s collapse, everyone in St. Petersburg linked Elizabeth’s health and Apraksin’s retreat with concerns about the succession to the throne. “If the empress should die,” the Marquis de l’Hôpital wrote to Versailles on November 1, “we shall see a sudden palace revolution, for the grand duke will never be allowed to reign.” Some believed that the empress would disinherit her nephew in favor of three-year-old Paul. A rumor suggested that with Paul on the throne under the control of the Shuvalovs, his parents
, Peter and Catherine, would both be sent back to Holstein.

  In mid-January 1758, Alexander Shuvalov interrogated Apraksin. The general’s testimony included his sworn denial that he had received any political or military directions from Catherine. Apraksin did admit to receiving correspondence from the grand duchess, and he handed over to Shuvalov all of his personal papers, including the three letters Catherine had written to him. Catherine was to see these letters again.

  A year after his dismissal, Apraksin was brought before a judge to receive his sentence: “And there now remains no course but—” Apraksin, overweight and apoplectic, never heard the end of the judge’s sentence. Expecting the words “torture” and “death,” he fell dead on the floor. The judge’s last words were to have been “to set him free.”

  36

  Catherine’s Daughter

  IN THE SPRING OF 1757, Catherine realized that she was pregnant with Poniatowski’s child. By the end of September, she stopped appearing in public. Her absence annoyed Peter, because when his wife was willing to appear at ceremonial functions, he was able to remain in his apartment. Empress Elizabeth, still unwell, made no public appearances, and with Catherine unavailable, the whole burden of representing the imperial family now fell on him. Irritated, the grand duke said to Lev Naryshkin, in the hearing of others, “God knows where my wife gets her pregnancies. I have no idea whether this child is mine and whether I ought to take responsibility for it.”

  Lev, true to character, ran to carry this remark to Catherine. Alarmed, she turned to Naryshkin and said, “You fool! Go back and ask the grand duke to swear that he has not slept with his wife. Tell him that if he is ready to swear such an oath, you will go immediately and inform Alexander Shuvalov so that appropriate action may be taken.”

  Lev raced back to Peter and asked him to swear the oath. Peter, too frightened of his aunt to make such a statement, refused. “Go to the devil!” he shouted. “And don’t ever speak to me about this matter again!”

  At midnight on December 9, 1757, Catherine began having contractions. Madame Vladislavova summoned Peter, and Alexander Shuvalov went to inform the empress. Peter arrived in Catherine’s room wearing his formal Holstein uniform, with top boots, spurs, a sash around his waist, and an enormous sword hanging at his side. Surprised, Catherine asked the reason for this costume. Peter replied that in this uniform he was ready to fulfill his duty as an officer of Holstein (not a grand duke of Russia) to defend the ducal house (not the Russian empire). Catherine’s first thought was that he was joking; then she realized that he was drunk. She told him to leave quickly so that his aunt would not have the double annoyance of seeing him reeling and also dressed head to foot in his Germanic Holstein uniform, which Elizabeth loathed. With the help of the midwife, who assured him that his wife would not give birth for some time, she convinced him and he departed.

  Elizabeth arrived. When she asked where her nephew was, she was told that he had just left and would soon be back. Catherine’s labor pains began to subside, and the midwife said that this respite could last some hours. The empress returned to her apartment, and Catherine lay back and slept until morning. She awoke feeling occasional contractions but was free of them for most of the day. In the evening, she was hungry and ordered supper. She ate and, rising from the table, was seized by sharp pains. The grand duke and the empress returned; both were just entering the room when Catherine gave birth to a daughter. The new mother immediately asked the empress to allow the child to be named Elizabeth. The empress declared that the infant should be named Anna, after her own older sister, Peter’s mother, Anna Petrovna. The baby was immediately taken away to the nursery in the empress’s apartment, where her three-year-old brother, Paul, awaited her. Six days later, the empress, as godmother, held little Anna over the baptismal font and brought Catherine a gift of sixty thousand rubles. This time, simultaneously, she gave an equal amount to her nephew.

  “It is said that the public celebrations were magnificent,” Catherine said, “but I did not see any. I remained in my bed alone without company except Madame Vladislavova. No one set foot in my apartment or sent to ask how I was.” This was untrue: Catherine’s loneliness lasted only a single day. It was true that her newborn was snatched away as Paul had been, but Catherine had expected that this would happen, and she suffered less. Otherwise, she was prepared. Having suffered isolation and neglect after Paul’s birth, she had made different arrangements this time. Her bedroom was not subject to drafts from poorly fitted windows. Knowing that only in secrecy would her friends dare to visit her, she had a large screen placed beside her bed, concealing an alcove containing tables, chairs, and a comfortable settee. When the curtain on that side of her bed was drawn, nothing could be observed. When the curtain was opened and the screen drawn aside, Catherine could see the smiling faces of her friends in the alcove. If anyone else who entered the room asked what was behind the closed barrier, they were told that it was the commode. This little fortress, constructed with forethought and guile, remained secure.

  On New Year’s Day 1758, the court celebrations were to end with another display of fireworks, and Count Peter Shuvalov, Grand Master of the Artillery, came to explain to Catherine what was planned. In the anteroom, Madame Vladislavova told Shuvalov that she thought that the grand duchess was sleeping, but that she would go and see whether he could be received. In fact, Catherine was far from asleep. She was in her bed, and in the alcove was a little group including Poniatowski, still resisting his recall and visiting Catherine every day.

  When Madame Vladislavova knocked on her door. Catherine closed the curtain on the screen side of her bed, received Vladislavova, and told her to bring in the visitor. Catherine’s friends behind the screen and curtain smothered their laughter. When Peter Shuvalov entered, Catherine apologized for keeping him waiting, having “only just awakened,” reinforcing this fib by rubbing her eyes. Their conversation was lengthy and continued until the count said that he had to leave in order not to keep the empress waiting for the fireworks to begin.

  Once Shuvalov had gone, Catherine pulled aside the curtain. The screen was pushed back and she found her friends exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. “You should not die of hunger or thirst while keeping me company,” she told them. She closed her curtain again and rang her bell. When Madame Vladislavova appeared, Catherine asked for supper—at least six good dishes, she specified. When the supper arrived and the servants were gone, her friends came out and threw themselves on the food. “This evening was one of the merriest in my life,” Catherine said. “When the bewildered servants came back to clear away the dishes, I think they were surprised at my appetite.” Her guests departed in high spirits. Poniatowski put on the blond wig and cloak he used on all of his nocturnal visits to the palace. In this disguise, when the sentries asked, “Who goes there?” he replied, “One of the grand duke’s musicians.” The ruse always worked.

  Six weeks after the birth, the churching ceremony for Catherine’s new daughter was held in the small palace chapel. But little Anna’s ceremony was sadly different from the one celebrated for her long-awaited brother, Paul. Indeed, Catherine said that for Anna, the chapel’s size was sufficient because “except for Alexander Shuvalov, no one attended.” Peter and Poniatowski were absent. Indeed, no one appeared to care much about this daughter, who, frail from birth, survived only fifteen months. When she died, she was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery with Catherine and Elizabeth, but neither Peter nor Poniatowski, present. At the ceremony, both women bent over the open casket and, following the rites of the Orthodox Church, kissed the small figure on her pale, white forehead. Soon, Anna was forgotten. In her Memoirs, Catherine never mentions her daughter’s death.

  37

  The Fall of Bestuzhev

  CHANCELLOR BESTUZHEV’S INFLUENCE was waning. The animosity of the Shuvalovs and Vice-Chancellor Michael Vorontsov was stoked by the French ambassador, who blamed him for the retreat of Bestuzhev’s friend General Apraksin. The crisis
reached a decisive moment when Vorontsov received a visit from the Marquis de l’Hôpital. Waving a paper, the French ambassador said, “Count, I have just received a message from my government. I am told that if, within fifteen days, Chancellor Bestuzhev has not been removed and replaced by you, it is with him that I must deal henceforth.” Alarmed, Vorontsov hurried to Ivan Shuvalov. They went together to the empress and warned that Count Bestuzhev’s shadow was dimming her own prestige in Europe.

  Elizabeth had never particularly liked her chancellor, but he was a legacy from the father she had idolized, and over the years she had grown to rely on him to manage most of the everyday business of government. The Shuvalovs had never been able to persuade the empress to make a change, but now she wavered. She was told that it was common knowledge in Vienna and Versailles that Bestuzhev had been paid a substantial English pension for many years. She was told that letters from Catherine to Apraksin had been passed through the chancellor’s hands. She learned that Russia’s allies felt they had been betrayed by the corruptibility of her generals and ministers and by the machinations of the young court. If a few unimportant letters had been found, why should not others of a more dangerous nature have been written and then destroyed or hidden? Why was Catherine interfering in matters concerning the crown? It was pointed out that the young court had been going its own way for a long time, flouting her wishes. Was not Poniatowski staying on in St. Petersburg simply because Catherine wanted him and because Bestuzhev preferred to obey the grand duchess rather than the monarch? Was not everybody running to the young court to flatter the rulers of tomorrow? Elizabeth was assured that she had only to arrest Bestuzhev and have his papers examined to find documents that would prove the chancellor’s complicity with the grand duchess on matters verging on treason.