Terrible Tsarinas

ously inventoried her wardrobes and trunks. They found 15,000

dresses, some of which Her Majesty had never worn.

The first to bow down before the trimmed and made-up

corpse were, as expected, her nephew Peter III (who found it dif-

ficult to disguise his joy) and her daughter-in-law Catherine

(already preoccupied with how to play this new hand of cards).

The cadaver, embalmed, scented, hands crossed and head

crowned, remained on exhibit for six weeks in a room in the Win-

ter Palace. Among the crowd that filed past the open casket,

many unknown individuals wept for Her Majesty who had so

loved the ordinary people and who had not hesitated to punish

the faults of the mighty. But the visitors irresistibly shifted their

gaze from the impassive mask of the tsarina to the pale and seri-

ous face of the grand duchess, who knelt by the catafalque. Cath-

erine seemed to have sunk into a never-ending prayer. Actually,

while she may have been murmuring interminable prayers, she

must in fact have been thinking about how to conduct herself in

the future, to thwart the hostility of her husband.

The presentation of the late empress to the people, in the

palace, was followed by the transfer of the remains to the Cathe-

dral of Our Lady of Kazan. There again, during the religious cere-

monies (which lasted ten days), Catherine astonished those in

attendance by her demonstrations of grief and piety. Was she try-

ing to prove how Russian she was, whereas her husband, the

Grand Duke Peter, never missed an occasion to show that he was

not? While the coffin was being solemnly transported from the

Kazan Cathedral to that of the Peter and Paul Fortress, for burial

< 234 >

Another Catherine!

in the crypt reserved for sovereigns of Russia, the new tsar scan-

dalized the most enlightened minds by laughing and making faces

behind the hearse. He must have been taking his revenge for all

the past humiliations by thumbing his nose at the dead. But no

one laughed at his high-jinks on a day of national mourning.

Covertly watching her husband, Catherine realized that he

was contributing to his own undoing. Moreover, he very quickly

announced the color of his intentions. The night following his

accession, he gave the order for Russian troops immediately to

evacuate the territories that they occupied in Prussia and Pomera-

nia. At the same time, he offered to sign “an accord of eternal

peace and friendship” with Frederick II, who had been conquered

only yesterday. Blinded by his admiration for this prestigious en-

emy, he threatened to impose the Holstein uniform on the Russian

imperial guard, to disband in a flourish of the quill certain regi-

ments that he considered too devoted to the dear departed, and to

make the Orthodox Church toe the line by obliging the priests to

shave their beards and to wear frock coats like Protestant pastors.

His Germanophilia took such proportions that Catherine

was afraid he would soon repudiate her and lock her up in a con-

vent. However, her partisans told her repeatedly that she had all

of Russia behind her — and that the imperial guard would not

tolerate anyone touching a hair on her head. The five Orlov broth-

ers, led by her lover Grigory, persuaded her that, far from despair-

ing, she should be delighted by the turn of events. It was time to

play all-out, they said. Didn’t Catherine I, Anna Ivanovna, and

Elizabeth I all win the throne through coups of outrageous au-

dacity? The first three empresses of Russia had shown her the

way. Now, she only had follow in their footsteps.

On June 28, 1762, the very same day that the Baron of

Breteuil wrote in a dispatch to his government that, “a public cry

of dissatisfaction is going up [in Russia],” Catherine, escorted by

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Alexis Orlov, went to visit the Guard regiments. She went from

one barrack to another and was hailed enthusiastically every-

where. The supreme consecration was given to her at once at Our

Lady of Kazan, where the priests, who knew her by her so-often

displayed piety, blessed her for her imperial destiny. The follow-

ing day, riding (in an officer’s uniform) at the head of several regi-

ments who had joined her cause, she moved on to Oranienbaum

where her husband, who suspected nothing, was regaling himself

in the company of his mistress, Elizabeth Vorontsov. He was

stunned to receive an emissary from his wife and to hear, from his

mouth, that a military uprising has just driven him out.

His Holstein troops not having managed to offer any resis-

tance to the insurgent, he signed, sobbing and trembling with

fear, the act of abdication that was presented to him. At that,

Catherine’s partisans packed him off in a closed carriage to the

palace of Ropcha, some thirty versts from St. Petersburg, where he

was placed under house arrest.

Catherine returned to St. Petersburg on Sunday, June 30,

1762, and was greeted by the peeling carillon of church bells, sal-

vos of artillery fire and howls of joy.6 It seemed that Russia was