Terrible Tsarinas

pleasure described her as a large, rotund woman, heavily made up,

smiling, with a triple chin, a ribald eye and gluttonous lips, gar-

ishly dressed, overloaded with jewels and not necessarily entirely

clean.

However, while everyone denounced her appearance as a

camp-follower masquerading as a sovereign, opinions are more

varied when it comes to her intelligence and decision-making

ability. She barely knew how to read and write; she barely spoke

Russian (and with a Swedish-tinged Polish accent, at that); but

from the first days of her reign she displayed a creditable intention

to emulate her husband’s thinking. She even learned a little

French and German in order to improve her understanding of for-

eign policy issues. And she relied on the common sense that she

inherited from a difficult childhood. Some of her interlocutors

found her more human, more understanding than the late tsar.

< 15 >

Terrible Tsarinas

That being said, she was conscious of her lack of experience and

consulted Menshikov before making any important decision. Her

enemies claimed, behind her back, that she was entirely beholden

to him and that she was afraid of dissatisfying him through any

personal initiative.

Was she still sleeping with him? Even if she had never de-

prived herself of that pleasure in the past, it is unlikely that she

would have persevered at her age and in her situation. Avid for

fair and flourishing flesh, she had no need to restrict herself to the

pleasures that may be available in the arms of an aging partner.

With complete freedom to choose, she changed lovers according

to her fantasies and did not spare any expense when it came to

rewarding them for their nights of prowess. The French ambassa-

dor, Jacques de Campredon, enjoyed enumerating some of these

transitory darlings in his Memoirs: “Menshikov is no longer any-

thing but an advisor,” he writes. “Count Loewenwolde appears to

have more credit. Sir Devier is still among the most outstanding

favorites. Count Sapieha has also stepped up to the job. He is a

fine young man, well-built. He is often sent bouquets and jew-

els. . . . There are other, second-class favorites, but they are known

only to Johanna, a former chambermaid of the tsarina and agent of

her pleasures.”

At the many suppers she held to regale her companions in

these tournaments of love, Catherine drank like a sailor. At her

command, ordinary vodka ( prostaya) was alternated, on the table,

with strong French and German liquors. She quite often passed

out at the end of these well-lubricated meals. “The tsarina was

rather ill from one of these debaucheries that was held on St. An-

drew’s Day,” noted the same Campredon in a report to his minis-

ter, dated December 25, 1725. “A bleeding set her up again; but, as

she is extremely plump and lives so very irregularly, it is expected

that she will have some accident that will shorten her days.”1

< 16 >

Catherine’s Reign: A Flash of Flamboyance

These binges of drinking and lovemaking did not prevent

Catherine from conducting herself like a true autocrat whenever

she recovered her wits. She scolded and slapped her maidservants

for a peccadillo, bellowed at her ordinary advisers, and attended

without a misstep the tiresome parades of the Guard; she rode on

horseback for hours at a time, to soothe her nerves and to prove to

one and all that her physical stamina was beyond dispute. Since

she had a sense of family, she brought in brothers and sisters

(whose existence Peter the Great had always chosen to ignore)

from their remote provinces. At her invitation, former Livonian

and Lithuanian peasants, uncouth and awkwardly stuffed into

formal clothing, disembarked in the salons of St. Petersburg.

Titles of “Count” and “Prince” rained down on their heads, to the

great scandal of the authentic aristocrats. Some of these new

courtiers with calloused hands joined the rest of Her Majesty’s

dinner crowd in the conclaves of good humor and licentiousness.

Nonetheless, however keen she may have been for this disso-

lute debauchery, Catherine always set aside a few hours to deal

with public affairs. Certainly, Menshikov continued to dictate

decisions in matters affecting the interests of the State, but, from

one week to another, Catherine gained in confidence and began to

stand up to her mentor, sometimes to the point of disputing his

opinions.

While recognizing that she would never be able to do with-

out the advice of this competent, devoted, wily man, she con-

vinced him to convene around her a High Privy Council, including

not only Menshikov but several other characters whose fidelity to

Her Majesty was notorious: Tolstoy, Apraxin, Vice Chancellor

Golovkin, Ostermann. . . This supreme cabinet relegated the tra-

ditional Senate to the sidelines, where they no longer discussed

any questions of primary importance. It was at the instigation of

the High Council that Catherine decided to ease the fate of the

< 17 >

Terrible Tsarinas