The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

It is January, 1744, and the commandant of Stettin, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst zu Dornburg, is keeping New-Year festivities at his castle of Zerbst, when suddenly couriers from Berlin, couriers from St. Petersburg, throw everyone into wild commotion. For the Czarina Elizabeth, casting about for a wife for her nephew, the young grand duke Peter of Holstein, nominated heir-presumptive to all the Russias, has accepted advice from Frederick, soon to become "the Great." She is formally desirous of a visit from the Princess of Zerbst and her daughter, Sophie Frederika, now fifteen years of age, and already noticeable for her good looks and good-sense. Not a moment is to be lost. So eastward, northward, the sleighs hurry them through the white leagues of snow, to arrive within six weeks at the Russian court, now established in Moscow; with little state or ceremony, nevertheless, for the princely house of Zerbst is poor as it is ancient. Sophie's wardrobe, she informs us herself, consists just of three, or it may be four, dresses, with twelve chemises. For here begins that singular autobiography; an unauthenticated fragment, it is true, but a self-portraiture convincing as any in literature.

At Moscow they made the best of impression; the Czarina was graciousness itself, and within eighteen months the young Princess had been received into the Greek Church as Catharine, and married to the Grand Duke, himself only seventeen years old.

But already she had learned not to expect happiness. He was, if we believe the accounts of him, senseless and boorish in the extreme. Certainly he did not pretend to the least affection for Catharine. A few days after her arrival, he had confided to her, "as his cousin," that he was "ardently in love with one of the maids-of-honor; since, however, the Empress desired it, he had resigned himself, and was willing to marry her instead!" She was forced, according to her assertion, to listen to confidences of a like nature during many years. His puerilities and eccentricities, we are told, amounted almost to madness. He was fond of drilling dogs and tin soldiers, together with his disgusted suite. But, like everyone else about the court, he lived in terror of the strong-willed, strong-drinking Czarina. His kennel must be kept a secret, and was accordingly located in his wife's bedroom. He would spend hours indoors cracking whips or emitting weird sounds on musical instruments. At night, after Madame Tchoglokoff, who was charged with the surveillance of the grand-ducal ménage, had retired, under the impression that she had locked everyone up safely, he would call for lights again, like a schoolboy, and make Catharine and her attendants play with marionettes on the counterpane till one, two, three o'clock in the morning.

He had been more or less drunk, to credit his enemies, since the age of ten; and Catharine declares he had a mortal aversion to the bath, which it seems was then a Russian, not a German, observance. When ordered by the Empress to take one as penance during Lent, he replied that it was repugnant to his moral nature and unsuited to his physical constitution: nothing, he said, but the most vital considerations could induce him to risk the Empress' displeasure, but he was not prepared to die; and life was dearer to him than her majesty's approbation. Both were obstinate, and the dispute led to the most terrific outburst of rage on the part of the Czarina that Catharine had yet witnessed.

On another occasion his wife discovered him presiding over a court-martial in full regimentals, with a large rat in the centre of the room, which had just been suspended with all the formalities of a military execution. It appeared that the unfortunate beast had transgressed the laws of war; it had climbed the ramparts of a card-board fortress, and had actually eaten two pith sentries on duty at the bastions. It was to be exposed to the public view as an example during three days following! Catharine, unluckily, was so lost to the fitness of things as to betray open merriment. The Grand Duke was furious; and she had to retire, excusing herself with difficulty on account of her ignorance of military discipline. The affair sensibly aggravated the estrangement between them.

Of Elizabeth, who led an eccentric life with her own peculiar intimates, Catharine knew little; but she was the victim of an unrelenting if petty tyranny, which kept jealous watch over every word and movement, deprived her of any attendant of whom she made a friend, and dictated every minute circumstance of her life. It was like nothing so much as a dame school, even to the various tutors and governesses ordered her by the Czarina. When her father died she was allowed a week's mourning; at the end of that time the Empress sent a command to leave off; "she was a grand duchess, and her father was not a king." But Catharine was not of the stuff from which are modelled the monuments of docility. Little by little, as her character develops, she acquires a proud and lonely self-dependence. She awakens to intellectual interests; from the first, indeed, she had flung herself with ardor into the study of Russian history and language. During these early years books are her great distraction; "dixhuit années d'ennui et de solitude," we read in a epitaph written by herself, "lui firent lire bien des livres."