Alexander II Read online

  With a jealous female gaze, Catherine admired the beauty of Empress Elizabeth, and naturally, the object of general envy, her incomparable long and shapely legs. Usually they were hidden by horrible crinolines and skirts. But once empress, Elizabeth came up with a way to show the world her best feature. Nocturnal masquerades were held, and the empress bade the ladies to appear in masculine garb. Her ladies-in-waiting were turned into tubby short-legged boys, while Elizabeth reigned over them as a tall, long-legged, handsome man.

  Little Catherine gradually came to understand another reason for the all-night masquerades: fear of the guards, and the memory of the nocturnal revolution.

  The story of how Elizabeth took power was a tempting example for the intelligent girl. By the time she was fifteen, Catherine understood the mediocrity of her husband and began bribing courtiers with gifts to create her own power base. She also learned about ruthless will from the empress. Elizabeth knew how to follow through to the end, like her father. Starting a war with Frederick the Great, the empress spent hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ lives on the battlefield.

  A series of failed battles nonetheless brought her success—his army was decimated. She was poised to beat Europe’s greatest military leader, but, once again, death, the great mocker, intervened, and took Elizabeth, on the eve of victory.

  The empress who had determined the fate of Europe was an ill-educated Russian landowner. She was sure that there was a land route to England. For all her strength and confidence, she was ridiculously fearful. Once, Catherine observed Elizabeth dressing down her minister. To soften her dangerous wrath, the court jester came in with his hedgehog. Seeing the hedgehog, the empress turned pale. She screamed, “It’s a mouse! It’s a real mouse!” Lifting her skirts, the empress of all Russia ran out of the room.

  Even as she observed the incongruous traits of Elizabeth, little Catherine learned the most important fact: Elizabeth had managed to seize the throne. Studying Russia’s secret history, the smart little girl discovered the most important rule of the empire: Unlimited autocracy in Russia was limited. It was limited by the will of the guards. In ancient Rome the Praetorian Guard decided who the all-powerful caesars would be. With good reason, Russia proudly called itself the Third Rome.

  But her wretched husband Peter did not understand that.

  Catherine’s husband, Emperor Peter III, ascended the throne after the death of his aunt. Peter and Catherine were the first Romanovs to live in the Winter Palace, which had just been completed. The late empress Elizabeth had brought the Italian architect Rastrelli to build it, but she did not live to see its completion.

  The new Winter Palace became the symbol of the house of the Romanovs. Built on the embankment of the rebellious Neva River, its main reception and ball rooms and facade face the river and the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Tsars were buried in the fortress, and the greatest enemies of the dynasty were incarcerated in its cells. This strange view from the palace would upset foreign visitors. Alexander’s nephew, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, later recalled, “We came to St. Petersburg in the period of usual fogs, which would have made London envious. ‘Your room is pleasant because,’ explained our tutor, ‘when the fog dissipates, you will see across the Neva the Fortress of Peter and Paul, where all the Russian tsars are buried.’ I felt sad. It wasn’t bad enough to have to live in this capital of fog, but there was also the proximity of corpses!”

  For Catherine’s husband, Emperor Peter III, that view of the prison was a fatal omen.

  Portraits of Alexander II’s great-grandfather depict him as a strong, broad-shouldered man in military uniform. In fact, Emperor Peter III, who adored the army, was weak, cowardly, and very kind. The compassionate emperor had all the victims of earlier revolts, the victims of the guards’ attacks on the palace, returned from exile. A festive ball was held for the returnees from Siberian exile. All the former time-servers, the great intriguers, the lovers of past empresses, many of whom had tried to destroy one another, danced in the thousand-square-meter, all-marble White Ballroom of the Winter Palace.

  One of the returned exiles said to the new emperor, “You are too kind, Your Majesty. Russians do not understand kindness, you must rule by knout or axe, that is the only time everyone is happy.” Another returnee told Peter III: “Your Majesty, your kindness will destroy you.”

  It was not kindness that destroyed him. It was his neglect of the guards regiments. The simple emperor was mistakenly confident in the unlimited nature of Russian autocracy. And he did what he wanted. He decided to serve the man who was his idol and the idol of all enlightened Europe, Frederick the Great. At the moment that the Russian army was about to vanquish the Prussian king, he gave orders to conclude a peace treaty with him.

  Soon rumors began to spread in the regiment barracks: The emperor was going to disband the Russian guards and create new guards regiments from his homeland in Holstein. The rumors were disastrous for the emperor. It was not hard to guess who was spreading them. Peter III and his wife, Catherine, were great enemies. Alexander’s great-grandparents were fashioning conspiracies against each other. He was planning to send her to a convent; she was planning to send him to the next world. She turned out to be the better planner.

  She received her secret lover, guardsman Grigory Orlov, in the Winter Palace. Her lover had four brothers, who were all courageous and beloved officers of the guards. They became conspirators, thanks to her relationship with the handsome officer. However, her body almost betrayed her. Catherine became pregnant. Peter learned of this from his spies, and decided to catch her giving birth. With proof of her infidelity, he could put her away in a convent. But Catherine solved the problem. When her time was due, she ordered a valet to set fire to his own house. The childish Peter adored fireworks and fires. He took off with his retinue to watch the house burn down. The newborn was sneaked out of the palace, wrapped in a beaver skin coat. By the time Peter returned, the iron-willed little woman, hemorrhaging, met him calmly and even gave him coffee.

  At last came the day of the third (this time, morning) coup headed by the guards. It took place on the saint’s day of the poor emperor. Catherine was living at the Peterhof Palace, and the emperor and the court were in another country palace, in Oranienbaum. Peter set out to Peterhof to visit his spouse, but Catherine was not there.

  Early that morning, Alexei Orlov, brother of her lover Grigory, came for her by carriage from St. Petersburg. Alexei Orlov was a giant of a man, who could fell a bull with a blow of his fist. He was a celebrated duelist, and a Don Juan. As a contemporary said of him, “I wouldn’t trust him with my wife or daughter, but I could perform great deeds with him.”

  Alexei Orlov found the empress in bed. He awakened her with the famous words, “The time has come for you to reign, Madame.” Catherine hesitated. But according to legend, Alexei Orlov “poured great determination into her womb.”

  The carriage driven by the audacious Alexei Orlov rushed Catherine to St. Petersburg, where the guards were waiting for her. The guards swore their loyalty to the former German princess. The creation of one Peter, Peter the Great, the glorious guards regiments, prepared to overthrow another, his grandson.

  The attack began in the style of the age that was called “gallant.” The charming Catherine rode on horseback, in regimental uniform, wearing a hat ornamented with oak leaves. She led the march of the imperial guards.

  Alexander’s wretched great-grandfather felt lost instantly. His courtiers fled shamelessly. Only the celebrated field marshal Khristofor Minikh remained steadfast. The seventy-year-old military man suggested sailing to the island of Kronstadt, to the impregnable naval fortress. They would stay there, gather loyal troops, and return to win back St. Petersburg. Peter was delighted by the plan. He was as easily enthused as he was depressed. They loaded up a galley and a small sailboat with the remains of the terrified court, those who had not had time to run away. Ladies in extravagant dresses, flashing precious stones and gold, gentlemen in parade
uniforms, all sailed to Kronstadt. But Catherine had planned for that, and Kronstadt had been taken by her supporters. The soldiers shouted from the fortress walls at the lawful emperor, telling him to get lost.

  Peter broke down and wept. According to a contemporary account, “Old Field Marshal Minikh, overcome with indignation, shamed him. ‘Can’t Your Majesty die like an emperor before his troops? If you are afraid of a sword blow, hold a crucifix in your hands, and they won’t dare harm you!’” But the emperor did not wish to die and he surrendered obediently. Catherine imprisoned her spouse at the charming country seat of Ropsha.

  She saved his letters from captivity, and Alexander II would later read them. In the letters, the emperor of all Russia begged permission to go to the toilet without watch guards and “pleaded humbly for a walk.” He humbly signed his letters to his wife, the Prussian princess who usurped the throne of his ancestors, “your servant Peter.” Catherine did not reply. She was apparently waiting for his guardians to figure out how this gallant revolution was to end. They finally did.

  A contemporary wrote: “Alexei Orlov, the brother of Catherine’s lover, a giant with a cruel scar across his cheek, two meters tall, offered the former emperor a goblet of wine with poison. The wretch drank it, and flames coursed through his veins. This aroused suspicion in the overthrown emperor and he refused the next glass. But they used force, and he defended himself. In that horrible struggle, in order to stifle his cries, they threw him on the ground and grabbed his throat. But he defended himself with strength that comes with final desperation, and they tried to avoid wounding him [the body would have to be displayed at the funeral—E. R.]. They placed a rifle strap on the emperor’s neck. Alexei Orlov kneeled with both legs on his chest and blocked his breathing. He passed away in their hands.”

  The official announcement in St. Petersburg was that the emperor “passed away from hemorrhoidal colic.” Few believed it. When Catherine later invited Jean Le Rond D’Alembert to St. Petersburg, the famous Encyclopedist refused. He wrote to Voltaire, “I am subject to hemorrhoids, and that seems to be a fatal disease in Russia.”

  As if in revenge, Alexander’s great-grandmother would die pathetically: She suffered a stroke while in the toilet. Her servants barely managed to pull her out, for her body was heavy and they had aged along with her. The empress was laid on a mattress on the floor of her room. Her physicians did not want her disturbed further.

  She had captivated Europe. The minds of the French Encyclopedists, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, all the European monarchs, the Crimean khan, and the nomadic Kirghiz had been engaged by her. She had controlled European politics like a puppeteer. “And when she tugged, Europe jumped like a cardboard clown,” wrote a contemporary. One of her generals put it accurately when he said proudly, “Not a single cannon in Europe dared shoot without our permission!” Now there she was, dying on the floor. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”

  The empress breathed hoarsely. The rattle could be heard in the next room, where her son, the new emperor, Paul I, had decided to have his study. The courtiers who hurried to the new master’s study ran past the bedroom of the helpless ruler. They would open the door and boldly stare at the dying woman.

  At ten o’clock, the British doctor came into Paul’s study and announced that the empress was dying. Only a few candles burned, and in the darkness Emperor Paul I and his courtiers awaited the sacred moment. The clock struck the quarter hour when the great-grandmother of Alexander II finally breathed her last.

  The late empress’s papers were gathered in her Privy Cabinet. It was there that her son, Emperor Paul I, found a large sealed envelope addressed: “To his Imperial Highness Pavel Petrovich, my dearest son.” The envelope contained Catherine’s “Notes,” his mother’s memoirs. He began reading avidly, and then with horror.

  Catherine had written about her life with unabashed frankness, in the spirit of Rousseau. The main protagonist of the great empress’s “Notes” was her miserable husband. She described Peter III ruthlessly—as a pathetic, infantile man who fell in love with every new lady-in-waiting. The only exception was his own wife. He would not sleep with her, simply because he did not know how it was done. Thus for nine years she could not give birth to an heir, though the interests of the empire required it. Her lady-in-waiting finally brought a message from the empress Elizabeth: “There are situations when the interests of higher importance demand exceptions to all the rules.” She proposed that Catherine select a lover, which she did. Soon after, she gave birth to a son, the future emperor Paul.

  We can imagine Paul’s feelings upon reading his mother’s “Notes.” He put them into another envelope and sealed them up with his seal, to be seen only by the next heir. When Nicholas I, Alexander’s father, ascended to the throne, he read the memoirs right away. He then called the great Catherine “the shame of the family” and forbade even members of the Romanov family to read the disgraceful “Notes.”

  Alexander would read them once he became emperor upon his father’s death. After that, Alexander II wrote on the envelope: “Seal until requested.” Apparently, he realized the ghastly point: Were they not Romanovs at all?

  In Catherine’s Privy Cabinet, a fragment of a letter that she had not destroyed remained among her papers. It was from her wretched husband. Peter III wrote, “Madame, I ask you not to worry that you will have to spend this night with me, because the time for fooling me has passed…. The bed has become too crowded for the two of us. After a two-week separation from you, your miserable spouse, whom you do not wish to honor with that name….” Here the text breaks off. But the date remains. The letter was written the year after their marriage. That means that he had slept with her, and that Peter was not indifferent to her at all! It was she who must have felt revulsion toward him. She did not want to sleep with him, and he suffered, but did not dare complain to his aunt the empress.

  It was only after Empress Elizabeth demanded an heir that Catherine had to overcome her revulsion and bear a son. Most likely, Paul I was the biological son of Peter III, after all. That is why Paul had his father’s looks, and character, and even his habits. That is why Catherine disliked him so much, born of a hated spouse. She likely made up the whole story about a lover being Paul’s real father, so that after her death, her son would not try to avenge his father or persecute her associates—the ones who killed his father and whom she valued so highly. That would have sown confusion in the empire that was her only true love. In her “Notes,” Catherine remained what she always had been—a ruler.

  But what if she had told the truth?

  After her “Notes,” the Romanovs became a mystery even to themselves.

  Once on the throne, Paul ordered that Peter III be reburied with great pomp, so that everyone could see how he honored his father. Peter had been buried in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Catherine had deprived him of the right to lie in the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul at the Fortress, where Russian tsars were to be buried. Paul had the remains of his father moved to the cathedral.

  First, Paul brought the family in black funereal carriages to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The coffin was raised and opened. Alexander’s great-grandfather had decomposed—his bones were scattered, his uniform had rotted, leaving only gloves, boots, and the hat on the skull. Paul made everyone in the family bring their lips to the sorrowful remains. Paul, his beautiful wife, and the children all kissed the horrible skull. Alexander’s father, Nicholas, was only a few months old at the time. Even he was brought to the opened coffin.

  The next day Peter III was to be reburied at the Fortress. Paul ordered his father’s murderer, Count Alexei Orlov, to follow the coffin and carry the crown of the emperor he had killed. The catafalque moved slowly in the freezing cold. Behind it, on gouty legs, strode the old giant with a vicious scar across his face, bearing the crown on a raspberry velvet pillow. Many said then that the scar was made by Peter
in his final death struggle, that he had torn Orlov’s cutlass away from him and left that mark on his face.

  The gigantic and sickly old man walked through half the city in the cold, delivering the crown to the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul.

  Terrible and great people lived in that century. Count Alexei Orlov was not known only for killing the tsar. During the war with the Turks, he commanded the Russian squadron. In the Bay of Chesmen, during a fierce battle, he burned down the entire Turkish fleet. It was the bloodiest naval battle of the century.

  They were special people. The grandfather of Alexander was right to fear them.

  Paul had the Mikhailovsky Castle built in the center of the city, surrounded by impregnable walls, water-filled moats, and sentries. But even with the castle, Alexander’s grandfather still did not completely appreciate the threat of the guards regiments. Like his abject father, Peter III, Paul I had faith in the power of the sovereign. He proudly stated that “an aristocrat in Russia is someone with whom I am now conversing and for only as long as I converse with him.” But the ruler of millions of subjects and master of a vast empire had forgotten history: His autocracy was limited, not by a constitution or a parliament, but by the stranglehold of the guards. He had forgotten his mother’s discovery.

  When he was heir to the throne, living in his palace at Gatchina, Paul created a mini army, as had his murdered father, Peter III. His Gatchina troops were trained in strict Prussian discipline. He began instilling that Gatchina discipline in Catherine’s pampered guards. With a passion bordering on mania, he ruthlessly punished the Catherine guards for the tiniest infraction in uniform or marching. Whenever officers went out on parade or on guard duty, they took cash with them because very often Paul sent officers who displeased him directly from the royal grounds to regiments on the outskirts of the empire. In the most elite Horse Guards regiment, out of 132 of Catherine’s officers, only two remained. Throughout his four-year reign, Paul seemed to be taking his revenge against his mother’s guards for the death of his father. Not surprisingly, a conspiracy formed in the guards regiments.