Terrible Tsarinas

Clutching the last hope that was offered, Catherine, disap-

< 22 >

Catherine’s Reign: A Flash of Flamboyance

pointed by Louis XV, decided to try for the Duke of Charolais.

This time, she thought, no one could accuse them of aiming too

high. Informed of this haggling, Elizabeth’s pride was hurt and

she begged her mother to give up her ill-considered ambitions,

which dishonored them both. However, Catherine claimed to

know better than anyone else what would be good for her daugh-

ter. Although she believed she was finally betting on a winning

horse, she suddenly ran into an even more humiliating refusal.

“Monseigneur is pledged to another,” declared Campredon, with

pained courtesy. The ambassador was truly distressed by the se-

ries of affronts that he was charged with inflicting upon the em-

press. The court of Russia was becoming unbearable to him. He

was ready to leave his post. But his minister, the Count de Mor-

ville, enjoined him to remain in place, warding off, on the one

hand, debates over Elizabeth’s marriage prospects and, on the

other hand, any attempt to bring together St. Petersburg with Vienna.

This double responsibility worried the prudent Campredon. He

no longer understood his country’s erratic political course. Learn-

ing that Catherine had invited the High Council to break off rela-

tions with France, which clearly wanted nothing to do with her,

and to prepare an offensive and defensive alliance with Austria

(which was disposed to help Russia, come what may), the diplo-

mat — disappointed, cheated, and sick at heart — demanded his

passports and on March 31, 1726, left the banks of the Neva, never

more to return.

After his departure, Catherine felt like someone who has

been misled in a youthful love affair. France, whom she adored so

much, had rejected her and betrayed her for another. It was not

her daughter who had been spurned, it was she, with her scepter,

her crown, her army, the glorious history of her fatherland and her

disproportionate hopes. Wounded to the quick, she sent a repre-

sentative to Vienna with the charge to negotiate the alliance that

< 23 >

Terrible Tsarinas

she had so often refused. From now on, Europe would be divided

into two camps: Russia, Austria and Spain on one side; France,

England, Holland and Prussia on the other. . . Certainly, the lines

might shift and influences might be felt across the borders, but,

overall, in Catherine’s eyes, the map was now drawn for the years

to come.

Amidst all this diplomatic intrigue, her advisers clashed,

making proposals and counter-proposals, haggling, arguing and

reconciling. Since joining the Supreme Privy Council, Duke

Charles Frederick of Holstein had distinguished himself by the

boldness of his demands. His need to regain possession of the ter-

ritories that once belonged to his family had turned into an obses-

sion. He viewed all the history of the globe through that of the

tiny duchy that he claimed was still his prerogative. Aggravated

by his continual claims, Catherine finally made an official request

to the King of Denmark to return Schleswig to her son-in-law, the

Grand Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Encountering a categorical re-

fusal on behalf of the Danish sovereign, Frederick IV, she called

upon the friendship of Austria and obtained its support for the

gadfly Charles Frederick’s claims to that parcel of land that, so

recently, had been part of his heritage and that he so shamefully

had been deprived of by the treaties of Stockholm and Frederiks-

borg. England then weighed in, making this imbroglio all the

more delicate.

The more vexing these knotty foreign affairs issues became,

the more the tsarina resorted to her favorite solace, drink. But, far

from relieving her torment, the excesses at the table began to un-

dermine her health. She stayed up partying until nine o’clock in

the morning and collapsed, drunk dead, on her bed, in the arms of

a partner whom she hardly recognized. The reverberations of this

disorderly existence dismayed her entourage. The courtiers began

to murmur among themselves, predicting the destruction of the

< 24 >

Catherine’s Reign: A Flash of Flamboyance

monarchy.

As if the sempiternal gossip were not enough to poison the

atmosphere at the palace, now people began talking again about

that imp of a grandson of Peter the Great, whom they insisted had

been wrongfully shunted aside. Issue of the unfortunate Alexis,

who had paid with his life for having the audacity to oppose the

policies of “The Reformer,” he was staggered to learn that his

name had cropped up in the debates over the succession. The in-

nocent’s adversaries maintained that he must share the paternal

forfeiture and that he was permanently excluded from the pre-

rogatives of the dynasty. But others claimed that his rights to the

crown were inalienable and that he was very much in a position to

mount the throne. . . under the tutelage of his close relations. His