Catherine the Great

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.

Elizabeth ordered a meeting of the war council for the evening of February 14, 1758. The chancellor was summoned. Bestuzhev sent word that he was ill. His excuse was rejected, and he was ordered to come immediately. He obeyed, and, upon arrival, he was arrested. His offices, titles, and orders were stripped from him, and he was sent back to his house a prisoner—without anyone troubling to tell him of what crimes he was accused. To make certain that the overthrow of the leading statesman of the empire would not be challenged, a company of the Imperial Guard was ordered out. As the guardsmen were marching along the Moika Canal, where Counts Alexander and Peter Shuvalov lived, the soldiers were cheerful, telling one another, “Thank God, we are going to arrest those cursed Shuvalovs!” When the men realized that it was not the Shuvalovs but Bestuzhev who was to be arrested, they grumbled, “It is not this man. It is the others who trample on the people.”

Catherine learned about the arrest the following morning in a note from Poniatowski. The note added that three other men—the Venetian jeweler Bernardi; her former Russian language teacher Adadurov; and Elagin, a former adjutant of Count Razumovsky’s who had become a friend of Poniatowski’s—had also been arrested. Reading this note, Catherine understood that she might be implicated. She was a friend and ally of Bestuzhev’s. Bernardi, the jeweler, was a man whose profession gave him entrée to all of the leading houses in St. Petersburg. Everyone trusted him, and Catherine had used him to send and receive messages from Bestuzhev and Poniatowski. Adadurov, her teacher, had remained devoted to her, and she had recommended him to Count Bestuzhev. Elagin, she said, was, “a loyal, honest man; once one gained his affection, one did not lose it. He had always shown marked zeal and devotion for me.”

Upon reading Poniatowski’s note, she was alarmed, but steeled herself not to display weakness. “With a dagger in my heart, so to speak,” she said, “I dressed and went to Mass where it seemed to me that most of the faces were as long as my own. No one said anything to me.” In the evening, she went to a ball. There, she marched up to Prince Nikita Trubetskoy, one of the commissioners appointed to assist Alexander Shuvalov in examining the arrested men.

“What do all these wonderful things mean?” she whispered to him. “Have you found more crimes than criminals or more criminals than crimes?”

“We have done what we were ordered to do,” Trubetskoy replied stolidly. “But as for crimes, we are still searching for them. Up to now, we have not found any.” His response encouraged Catherine, who also noted that the empress, having just ordered the arrest of her senior minister, failed to appear that night.