Catherine the Great

Princess Dashkova spent the summer of 1761 living in her father’s dacha on the Gulf of Finland, midway between Peterhof, where the empress was staying, and Oranienbaum, where Peter and Catherine held their summer court. Paul remained in Elizabeth’s household at Peterhof, but the empress now permitted Catherine to drive every Sunday from Oranienbaum to Peterhof to spend the day watching her son play in the palace garden. On the way home, Catherine often stopped her carriage at the Vorontsov dacha and invited the princess to spend the rest of the day with her at Oranienbaum. There, in Catherine’s gardens or in her apartment, the two women talked about books and political theory. Dashkova felt that she had reached a rare intellectual summit. “I may venture to assert there were not two women in the empire except the grand duchess and myself who occupied themselves at all in serious reading,” she wrote in her memoirs. During these long conversations, the princess convinced herself that Catherine was the only possible “savior of the nation,” and that it was essential that she, not Peter, succeed to the throne. Catherine did not encourage the expression of these opinions. She looked on Dashkova as a brilliant, enchanting child, whose adoration was flattering and companionship stimulating, but she realistically saw herself coming to power as Peter’s wife—providing she could maintain her position against Elizabeth Vorontsova. Dashkova, for her part, felt something close to worship for the grand duchess: “She captured my heart and mind and inspired me with enthusiastic devotion. I felt a devoted attachment which knew no competition except the love I bore my husband and children.”

Grand Duke Peter and Elizabeth Vorontsova persisted in trying to lure Princess Dashkova into their circle. Peter, observing her admiration for his wife, warned her, saying, “My child, you would do well to remember that it is much safer to deal with honest blockheads like your sister and me than with those great wits who squeeze the juice out of the orange and then throw away the rind.” Dashkova was not afraid of standing up to Peter. Once at a dinner for eighty at which both Peter and Catherine were present, the grand duke, having drunk too much Burgundy, slurred out that a young officer suspected of being the lover of one of the empress’s relatives should be beheaded for his impertinence. Challenging the grand duke, Dashkova said that this punishment appeared tyrannical, “for even if the crime in question were proved, so frightful a punishment was highly disproportionate to the offence.”

“You are a mere child,” Peter replied, “otherwise you would know that to be sparing of the punishment of death is to encourage insubordination and every kind of disorder.”

“But, sir,” Dashkova fired back, “almost all who have the honor of sitting in your presence have lived only during a reign in which such a punishment has never yet been heard of.”

“As to that,” declared the grand duke, “it is the very cause of the present want of discipline and order. But, take my word for it, you are a mere child and know nothing about the matter.”

The Holsteiners at the table were silent, but Dashkova persisted. “I am very ready to acknowledge, sir, that I am unable to comprehend your reasoning, but one thing of which I am very sensible is that your august aunt still lives and sits on the throne.” All eyes immediately turned, first to the young woman, then to the heir to the throne. But Peter did not answer, and ultimately ended the confrontation by sticking his tongue out at his adversary.

The episode won Dashkova much praise. Grand Duchess Catherine was delighted and congratulated her; the story spread and “gained me a high degree of notoriety,” wrote Dashkova. Every episode of this kind increased the contempt the princess felt for the heir to the throne: “I saw how little my country had to hope from the grand duke, sunk as he was in the most degrading ignorance and swayed by no better principle than a vulgar pride in being the creature of the King of Prussia, whom he called, ‘the king my master.’ ”