Terrible Tsarinas

While they noisily penetrated the building, Repnin, crimson-

faced, howled: “Who dared. . . without my orders. . . ?” “I followed

those of Her Majesty, the Empress,” answered Buturlin, without

leaving the window.

< 8 >

Catherine Shows the Way

This demonstration by the army stifled the last of the pro-

testers’ exclamations. In the meantime, Catherine had slipped

away. She had been sure of her victory from the first comments.

In the presence of the troops, the Lord High Admiral Apraxin had

Makarov confirm that no will existed that opposed the assembly’s

decision and, thus reassured, he concluded good-naturedly, “Let

us go and offer our homage to the reigning empress!” The best ar-

guments are those of the saber and the gun. Convinced in the

wink of an eye, the Generalité, princes, senators, generals and ec-

clesiastics submissively moved toward the apartments of Her very

new Majesty.

In order to conform to legal procedures, Menshikov and Bu-

turlin promulgated a proclamation that same day certifying that

“the very serene Prince Peter the Great, emperor and sovereign of

all the Russias,” had wished to regulate the succession of the em-

pire by having “his dear wife, our very gracious Empress and Dame

Catherine Alexeyevna [crowned], . . . because of the great and im-

portant services that she has rendered to the advantage of the

Russian Empire. . . .” At the bottom of the proclamation one may

read, “Presented to the Senate, in St. Petersburg, January 28,

1725.”3

The publication of this document aroused no serious opposi-

tion among the notables nor the general public; and Catherine

began to breathe more easily. The deal was done. For her, it was a

second birth. When she thought back to her past as a soldiers’

whore, she was dizzied by her elevation to the rank of legitimate

wife, then of sovereign. Her parents, simple Livonian farmers, had

died of the plague one after the other, when she was still very

young. After wandering through the countryside, famished and

all in tatters, she was taken in by the Lutheran pastor Glück, who

employed her as a maidservant. But, an orphan with a tempting

figure, she quickly betrayed his tutelage and ran off, sleeping in

< 9 >

Terrible Tsarinas

the camps of the Russian army that had come to conquer Polish

Livonia. She rose in rank from one lover to another, until she be-

came the mistress of Menshikov, then of Peter himself. If he en-

joyed her, it was certainly not for her education, for she was prac-

tically illiterate and she spoke execrable Russian; but he had many

occasions to appreciate her valiancy, her spirit and her great al-

lure. The tsar had always sought out women who were well-

endowed in flesh and simple in spirit. Even if Catherine was often

untrue to him, even if he was fed up with her betrayals, he re-

turned to her even after the worst quarrels. The notion that the

“break up” was final, this time, left her feeling both punished and

relieved.

The fate that was in store for her seemed extraordinary, not

only because of her modest origins but because of her gender,

which historically had been relegated to secondary roles. No

woman before her had ever been empress of Russia. From time

immemorial, the throne of that immense land had been occupied

by males, according to the hereditary line of descent. Even after

the death of Ivan the Terrible and the confusion that followed,

neither the impostor Boris Godunov nor the shaky Fyodor II nor

the theory of the false Dmitris that plagued the “Time of Troubles”

had changed anything in the monarchical tradition of virility.

It took the extinction of the house of Rurik, the founder of

old Russia, for the country to resign itself to having a tsar elected

by an assembly of boyars, prelates and dignitaries (the “Sobor”).

Young Mikhail Fyodorovich, the first of the Romanovs, was cho-

sen. After him, imperial power was transmitted without too

many clashes for nearly a century. It was only in 1722 that Peter

the Great, breaking with tradition, decreed that the sovereign

should thenceforth designate an heir however seemed best to him,

without regard for the dynastic order. Thus, thanks to this inno-

vator who had already upset his country’s ways from top to bot-

< 10 >

Catherine Shows the Way

tom, a woman of no birth or political qualification had the same

rights as a man to assume the throne. And the first to benefit from

this inordinate privilege would be a former servant, a Livonian by

origin and a Protestant at that, who became Russian and Ortho-

dox late in the game and whose only claims to glory were acquired

in the sack. Is it possible that the hands that had so often washed

the dishes, made the beds, bleached the dirty linen and prepared

the swill for the army rabble would be the same ones that tomor-

row, scented and bearing rings, would sign the ukases upon which

hung the future of million subjects, frozen with respect and fear?

Day and night, the idea of this formidable promotion