Catherine the Great

The next day, Gottlieb von Stambke, the Holstein administrator who was close to Bestuzhev, brought Catherine good news. He said that he had just received a clandestine note from Count Bestuzhev asking him to tell the grand duchess that she should not worry because he had had time to burn all his papers. These included, most significantly, the drafts of his proposal that the grand duchess share power with Peter after Elizabeth’s death. Further, the former chancellor had said that he would keep Stambke informed of what happened to him during his interrogation and would pass along the questions put to him. Catherine asked Stambke through what channel he had received Bestuzhev’s note. Stambke said that Bestuzhev’s horn player had passed it to him, and that, in future, all communications were to be placed in a pile of bricks near Bestuzhev’s house.

A few days later, Stambke came back to Catherine’s room, frightened and pale, to tell her that his correspondence and that of Count Bestuzhev with Count Poniatowski had been intercepted. The horn player had been arrested. Stambke himself expected to be dismissed, if not arrested, at any moment, and he had come to say goodbye. Catherine was certain that she had done nothing wrong, and she knew that, aside from Michael Vorontsov, Ivan Shuvalov, and the French ambassador, everyone in St. Petersburg was convinced that Count Bestuzhev was innocent of any crime.

Already, the commission charged with prosecuting the former chancellor was struggling. It became known that the day after Count Bestuzhev’s arrest, a manifesto had been drafted secretly in Ivan Shuvalov’s house, intended to inform the public why the empress had been obliged to arrest her old servant. Unable to find and state any specific offense, the accusers had decided that the crime was to be lèse-majesté: offending the empress by “attempting to sow discord between Her Imperial Majesty and Their Imperial Highnesses.” On February 27, 1758, the manifesto was published, announcing the arrest, the charges, the fact that Bestuzhev had been stripped of his offices and decorations and that he would be examined by a special commission. The flimsy document convinced no one in St. Petersburg, and the public found it ludicrous to threaten the former statesman with exile, confiscation of property, and other punishments, with no evidence of a crime, no trial, and no judgment.

The first step taken by the commissioners was equally absurd. They ordered all Russian ambassadors, envoys, and officials at foreign courts to send copies of all dispatches Count Bestuzhev had written to them during the twenty years he had administered Russia’s foreign affairs. It was alleged that the chancellor had written whatever he pleased, often in opposition to the wishes of the empress. But because Elizabeth never wrote or signed anything, it was impossible to prove that the chancellor had acted contrary to her orders. As for verbal orders, the empress could hardly have given any significant number of these to the chancellor, who sometimes waited for months without being admitted to see her. Nothing came of this. None of the personnel in embassies bothered to examine archives ranging back over many years in order to search for crimes committed by the man whose instructions these same subordinates had loyally obeyed. Who knew but that this might lead to finding themselves implicated? Besides, once these documents arrived in St. Petersburg, it would take years of research to locate and interpret whatever nuggets, favorable or unfavorable, they might contain. The order was ignored. The inquiry lumbered along for a year. No evidence was produced, but the former chancellor was exiled to one of his own estates where he remained until, three years later, Catherine became empress.

With Stambke’s departure for Holstein, Catherine’s handling of the affairs of Peter’s duchy ended. The empress told her nephew that she disapproved of his wife’s involvement in the ruling of his hereditary duchy. Peter, who had enthusiastically encouraged Catherine’s participation in that work, now declared that he agreed with his aunt. The empress then formally asked the king of Poland to recall Count Poniatowski.