SOPHIA AUGUSTA FREDERICA

SOPHIA AUGUSTA FREDERICA, who, upon her marriage to the grandson of Peter the Great, assumed the name CATHARINA ALEXIEVNA, was born at Stettin on the 2d of May 1729. Her father was Christian Augustus, prince of Anhalt Zerbst-Dornburg, at that time major general in the Prussian service, commander in chief of the regiments of infantry, and governor of the town and fortrefs of Stettin. Her mother, who was born princess of Holstein Eutin, was a woman of great parts and beauty of nearly the same age with the prince royal of Prussia, afterwards Frederic the Great, with whom she kept up a regular correspondence, and who afterwards contributed to the aggrandisement of her daughter. This accomplished princess took upon herself the care of educating the young Sophia, whom she brought up in the simplest manner, and would not suffer to exhibit the least symptoms of that pride to which she had some propensity from her earliest childhood. The consequence of this salutary restraint was, that good hu-

Catharine. mout, intelligence, and spirit, were even then the striking features of her youthful character. Being naturally addicted to reading, to reflection, to learning, and to employment, she was taught the French and other fashionable languages; and was instructed to read such books chiefly as might make her acquainted with history and with the principles of science; whilst the doctrines of the Lutheran religion were carefully explained to her by a divine, who little thought how soon his illustrious pupil would embrace another faith.

The Empress Elizabeth, who then swayed the sceptre of Russia, had in early life been promised in marriage to the young prince of Holstein-Eutin, brother to the prince of Anhalt-Zerbst; but at the instant when the marriage was about to be celebrated, the prince fell sick and died. Elizabeth, who loved him to excess, became inconsolable, and in the bitterness of her grief made a vow of celibacy. This vow, though sensual, and even lascivious, she kept so far as never publicly to acknowledge any man as a husband; and upon her ascending the throne of her ancestors, she called her nephew the Duke of Holstein Gottorp to her court, where he was solemnly proclaimed, when fourteen years of age, Grand Duke, with the title of Imperial Highness, and declared successor to the Empress Elizabeth. To secure the succession in the family of Peter the Great, the Empress was very desirous to have her nephew married; and the prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, not ignorant of the tender remembrance which she still preserved for her brother, conceived the idea of placing, by means of it, her daughter on the throne of Russia. She communicated her plan to the king of Prussia, who not only applauded it, but lent her his assistance to carry it into execution.

Full of ambitious hopes, therefore, the princess repaired with her daughter to St Petersburg, where she was received with friendship by Elizabeth, and where the young Sophia soon made a considerable impression on the mind of the Grand Duke. As Peter was well made, of a good figure, and, though uneducated, not destitute of natural talents, the attachment became reciprocal; and the prince of Zerbst, throwing herself at the feet of the empress, assured her, that the two lovers were attached to each other by a passion unconquerable; and calling to her mind the love which she had herself borne to the prince of Holstein, conjured her to promote the happiness of that prince's niece. The stratagem succeeded. The choice of Elizabeth was next day announced to the council and to the foreign ministers; and preparations were made for celebrating the marriage with a magnificence worthy of the heir of the throne of the Russias. In the mean time the Grand Duke was seized with the small-pox, from which, tho' he recovered, it was with such a change of features, as rendered him, from being comely, almost hideous, and converted the love of the young princess of Anhalt, if indeed she ever felt for him that passion, into horror and disgust. She was not, however, of a disposition to let a disguised countenance frighten her from a throne. She embraced the Greek religion, changed her name from Sophia Augusta Frederica to CATHARINA ALEXEVNA, and with the entire approbation of Elizabeth was married to her nephew the Grand Duke.

For some time this ill-matched pair lived together, though without love, yet on terms apparently decent; but a mutual dislike gradually took place between them,

which the courtiers quickly discovered, and were at Catharine's pains to foment into hatred. Peter was now ugly, and his mind was uninformed. Catharine, if not a beauty, was at least a lovely woman, and highly accomplished. She could find no entertainment in his conversation, and he felt himself degraded by her superiority. A faction was formed at court, headed by the great chancellor Bestucheff, to exclude the Grand Duke from the throne, and to place Catharine at the head of affairs; and to accomplish this end, every art was employed to fill the feeble mind of the empress with jealousies of her nephew, and with a contempt of his character. He was represented at one time as extremely ambitious, and capable of the most daring enterprises, to get immediate possession of the throne; and at another, as a wretch given up to drunkenness and to every unprincipled vice.

The consequence of the first of these accusations was, that he was kept at a distance from his aunt, and a stranger to public affairs; and being wholly unemployed, that time which his education had not fitted him to fill up with reading, reflection, and rational conversation, hung so heavy on his mind, that it was no difficult matter for those dissipated young men, who were placed about him for that very purpose, to initiate him in the habits of drunkenness and the other mean practices to which it was pretended he had long been devoted. In such a school, it was no wonder that he became a proficient in grovelling dissipation; or that, being unpolished, and even of rude manners, he chose for his companions some of the lowest of the people.

Catharine, in the mean time, languished for that happiness which she could not find in the society of her husband. She was fond of pleasure; but it was that comparatively refined pleasure which she had enjoyed at the court of Berlin. She loved balls, music, and elegant conversation, and could take no share in the drunken revels of Peter. Among the young men with whom he was surrounded, his chamberlain Soltikoff was particularly remarked for the elegance of his taste and the graces of his person; and though yet scarcely more than a boy in years, he was said to have obtained the favours of several ladies of the court. Success had made him confident and ambitious; and his ambition prompted him to aspire at making a conquest even of the Grand Duchess. By studying her taste, and contriving to amuse her, he was at last successful; and obtained from her Imperial Highness every favour which he could wish; but he enjoyed not his fortune with moderation, and his enemies contrived to get him placed in an honourable office at a distance from the court. He was commissioned to repair to Stockholm, with the title of Envoy Extraordinary, to notify to the king of Sweden the birth of Paul Petrovitch, of whom the Grand Duchess had just been delivered*. The presumptuous Soltikoff, proud of the employment, set off with haste to Sweden, and left it with equal speed. But scarcely had he quitted Stockholm, on the wings of love and ambition, when he was stopped on the road by a courier, who put into his hands an order for him to go immediately to Hamburg, and there to reside in the quality of minister plenipotentiary from the court of Russia.

Catharine for some time preserved her attachment to the exiled chamberlain; but all at once the presence of a stranger, whom fortune had brought to the court of Russia, made her forget the lover whom she no longer

curate saw. This person was Stanislaus Poniatowsky, the late king of Poland, who first made his appearance at St Petersburg in the train of the British ambassador, and very quickly gained the affections of the Grand Duchess. In carrying on this intrigue, the lovers were not so cautious as to deceive the eyes of the envious courtiers, who reported to the empress not only all that they saw, but whatever they suspected. Elizabeth was incensed, and commanded Poniatowsky to quit without delay the dominions of Russia. The accomplished Pole obeyed; but soon returned clothed with a character which made him in some degree independent of the empress.

The Count de Bruhl, then prime minister to the king of Poland, saw of what importance it was to his master to have a powerful interest at the court of Russia. He was likewise no stranger to the passion which the Grand Duchess entertained for Poniatowsky; and having got that nobleman decorated with the order of the White Eagle, he sent him back to St Petersburg in the quality of minister plenipotentiary from the republic and king of Poland. Nor was this all that Bruhl did for the two lovers. Being informed by the chancellor Bestucheff, that the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess were languishing in a penury unworthy of their rank, he remitted to Poniatowsky 6000 ducats, to be employed in such a manner as he might judge best for securing the favour of the prince and his consort. The ambassador profited by these counsels and benefactions. He was already sure of the Grand Duchess's heart, and he very quickly gained the favour of her husband. He talked English and German with him; drank, smoked, abused the French, and extolled the king of Prussia with unlimited praise.

The Grand Duchess was so blinded by her passion, that she was never without Poniatowsky in her company. She devoted to him the whole of her time; and she made this intimacy so little a secret, that public report was loud to her prejudice. In the mean time she was delivered of the Princess Anne†, who lived only fifteen months. The Grand Duke was the only person about court who seemed to know nothing of what was passing. His whole time was occupied in copying, with fervid affection, the air, the manners, the tone of the king of Prussia; and in dressing a little army at Oranianbaum in the Prussian uniform. His eyes, however, were at last opened. Some of the courtiers, from hatred to the chancellor, who countenanced the intrigue between the Grand Duchess and the Polish ambassador, roused his jealousy in order to destroy their enemy. They succeeded. He forbade his wife to be seen with Poniatowsky, and prevailed with the empress to deprive the chancellor of his office, and to banish him to an estate which he had 120 versts beyond Moscow.

Catherine had now to support at once the aversion of her husband, the indignation of the empress, the insulting disdain of a court, which a few days before was lavish of its affabilities and smiles; and what afflicted her most of all, the dread of losing for ever her favourite Poniatowsky. Her courage, however, did not forsake her. Poniatowsky was indeed recalled, and left Russia, after suffering some deserved indignities from the Grand Duke, who about this time formed a connection with

one of the daughters of the Senator Vorontzoff, brother Catherine to the new chancellor. This lady, Elizabeth Romanovna Vorontzoff, was elder sister to the Princess Dashkoff, who acted so conspicuous a part in the revolution which set the crown on the head of Catherine. She was beautiful, but vain; and possessed not either the wit or the understanding of her sister.

In the mean time the health of the empress visibly declining, Catherine was very desirous of being reconciled to her: but the irritated sovereign would listen to no accommodation, except on terms too humiliating for the haughty spirit of the Grand Duchess. Catherine, therefore, absented herself from court, and asked permission to retire into Germany. This, as she had foreseen, was refused. Elizabeth was too fond of the young Paul Petrovitch to permit the departure of his mother, and thereby expose him to the danger of being at some future period declared illegitimate. She took the Grand Duchess again into favour; and it is thought, that had she lived a little longer than she did, she would have excluded Peter from the throne, and declared Paul her immediate successor.

Whilst the empress was meditating the aggrandisement of the young prince and his mother, the Grand Duke had conceived a plan for degrading them both. He had resolved, at the moment his aunt should close her eyes, to assemble his troops, to get himself proclaimed emperor, to repudiate the Grand Duchess, to declare the young Paul Petrovitch illegitimate, and publicly to marry his mistress Elizabeth Romanovna Vorontzoff. We have shown elsewhere (see Russia, n° 72. Encycl.) how this plan, when almost ready to be carried into execution, was betrayed to Catherine, who, ever since her caballing with the Chancellor Bestucheff, had resolved, by some means or other, to snatch the sceptre from the feeble hand of her husband. At present, we believe she was not acquainted with it; and though she had, she could not now have turned it to her advantage, as her party, ever since the disgrace of Bestucheff, was without a leader of any abilities.

Amid these distractions caused by the prospect of the death of the empress, and the known hatred of the Grand Duke and Duchess to each other, Count Panin, preceptor to the young prince, devoted himself entirely to Catherine. He wished to see her possessed of all the power of the empire; but he was afraid to proceed to the extremity to which she proposed to go, and to deprive Peter of the name of Emperor. He contrived therefore to procure an apparent reconciliation between the Grand Duke and his consort, as well as between him and his aunt Elizabeth; and he had almost persuaded the silly prince not to assume the sovereign power on the death of the empress, till he should be solemnly invested with it by a decree of the senate. Could he obtain this point, he knew that the power of Peter would be limited, and the authority secured to his wife and his son. He was, however, disappointed. Catherine herself disapproved of this plan, and concurred with the real friends of her husband in advising him "to conform to established custom in assuming the reins of empire."

He had hardly received this advice when word was brought him that the Empress Elizabeth was dead (A); and

Catharine. and the courtiers pressed in crowds about him. He accosted them with dignity, received the oaths of the officers of his guard, and seemed at once to have laid aside his weakness. In an hour he got on horseback, traversed the streets of St Petersburg, and distributed money among the multitude and the soldiers. He had been so treated by his aunt, that he could not possibly be grieved at her death; but in paying the last duties to her remains, he betrayed no indecent elation. The first actions of his reign were prudent and patriotic, and such as would have done honour to a greater prince. He appeared to be reconciled to his wife, in whose company he spent much of his time; he recalled from prison and banishment 17,000 persons, some of them of rank and of great talents, who had been the victims of Elizabeth's jealous timidity; he permitted the nobility to bear arms or not at their own discretion, freeing them at the same time from the extreme servitude under which they had been held by his immediate predecessors; and he abolished the secret committee, an infamous inquisitorial tribunal, which ever since the reign of the father of Peter the Great had been the chief engine of Russian despotism.

He neglected, however, one thing; which, among the people over whom he was appointed to reign, would have contributed more to the security of his throne than all the wise and beneficent edicts which he had published. He made no preparations to be crowned at Moscow. Instead of complying with this ancient ceremony, and humouring the prejudices of his superstitious subjects, he thought of nothing but of war with Denmark, and of a personal interview with the king of Prussia in Germany. His admiration of that great monarch hurried him indeed into the most extravagant follies. Not contented with giving him peace, and entering into an offensive and defensive alliance with him, he had the meanness to solicit a commission in his army, and to accept of the rank of major-general. Of this title he seemed more vain than of that of Emperor of all the Russians. He constantly wore the Prussian uniform; introduced among his troops the Prussian discipline, which, though better than their own, was disagreeable, because it was new, and much more because it was German; and he raised his uncle, a man of no military talents, and a foreigner, to the dignity of generalissimo of the Russian armies; giving him at the same time the particular command of the horse-guards, a body of men which had never before been under any command but that of the supreme head of the empire. Nor did his infatuated predilection for Germany, a country abhorred by the Russians, stop even here: He disbanded the noble guards which had placed Elizabeth on the throne, dismissed the horse guards from the service which they performed at court, and substituted his Holstein guards in their place.

Whilst he was thus alienating from himself the affections of the army, he contrived to disgust another order of men, whose attachment he should have laboured above all things to retain. He was at pains to shew his preference of the Lutheran faith and worship to the doctrines and ceremonies of the Greek church; he attempted to make some alterations in the dress of the monks; he annexed great part of the possessions of the church to the domains of the crown; and he banished the archbishop of Novogorod, who opposed these inno-

vations; and found himself obliged suddenly to recall Catharine.

He had now returned to his former courses. He flouted himself up for whole days with his mistresses and drunken companions; he compelled the nobility and ladies of the court to sit in company with buffoons and comedians; he insulted every foreign minister but the ministers of Great Britain and Prussia; and he made no secret of his intention to repudiate the empress, declare Paul Petrovitch illegitimate, and marry the Countess Vorontzoff. Convinced, however, as it would seem, that he could not be a father, he resolved to adopt Prince Ivan, the descendant of the elder brother of Peter the Great, whom Elizabeth had dethroned and confined in prison, to declare him his successor, and to unite him in marriage with the young princess of Holstein-Beck, who was then at St Petersburg, and whom he cherished as his daughter.

This inconsistent and weak conduct of the emperor turned the attention of all orders of men to the empress, who made it her sole employment to gain those hearts which he was losing. Instructed from her infancy in the arts of dissimulation, it was not difficult for her to affect, in the sight of the multitude, sentiments the most foreign to her mind. The pupil of the French philosophers put on the air of a bigot to the most superstitious ceremonies of the Greek religion, and treated the ministers of that religion with the profoundest reverence. And whilst her husband was getting drunk amidst a rabble of buffoons, and disgusting every person of decency who approached him, she kept her court with a mixture of dignity and affability, which attracted to her all who, by capacity, courage, or reputation, were capable of serving her.

Correct, however, as her public conduct appeared, her private life was not less licentious than formerly. While yet Grand Duchess, she had formed a very tender connection with Gregory Orloff, a man of mean birth, and of no education, but possessed at once of personal beauty and the most daring courage. He had an inferior commission in the artillery, while his two brothers were common soldiers in the regiments of guards. The intrigue which she carried on with him was known only to one of her women named Catharine Ivanovna; nor did Orloff himself for some time suspect the rank of the lady who so lavishly conferred upon him her favours in secret. At last finding him intrepid and discreet, she discovered herself, unvailed to him all her ambitious designs, and easily prevailed with him and his brothers to enter with zeal into her conspiracy against the emperor. Orloff likewise gained over Bibikoff his friend, a Lieutenant Paslick, with other officers; and by their means easily seduced some regiments of the guards. The Princess Dashkoff was strongly attached to Catharine, we believe, from worthy motives, and had frequent meetings with Orloff on the business of the conspiracy, without suspecting that he was so much as known to the empress. Count Panin, too, and the Hetman of the Kosacks, were determined to tumble Peter from the throne; but they were not inclined to go all the length proposed by Catharine and her two favourites. Hoping to enjoy the actual power of the empire themselves, they were for declaring Paul Petrovitch emperor in the room of his father, and conferring upon his mother the name and authority only of regent; while

divorce the princess and Orloff, knowing the sentiments and wishes of the empress, were resolved to vest her with sovereign power, or to perish themselves in the hazardous attempt.

In the mean time the anniversary of the patron saints of Russia was at hand, when Peter had determined, at the conclusion of the festival, to divorce the empress, shut her up in prison, declare her son illegitimate, and publicly marry his mistress. As they who plan a conspiracy are always more vigilant than those against whom it is directed, the friends of Catharine were carefully informed of all that passed about the emperor, whilst he was kept in total ignorance of their proceedings. It was therefore necessary for them to unite in the same plan, and to carry it quickly into execution; for delay or divisions would involve them all in one common ruin. The empress contrived to bring over the Hetman entirely to her views; and the Princess Dashkoff, by the sacrifice, it has been said, of her charms, found little difficulty in reconciling Count Panin to the same measures. They now agreed to seize the Tzar on his arrival at Peterhoff, an Imperial palace on the shore of the Gulf of Cronstadt, where he proposed to celebrate the approaching festival; and they were waiting impatiently for the moment of action, when all at once their plot was discovered.

Passick, who has been mentioned among the conspirators, had gained the soldiers of the company of guards in which he was a lieutenant; but one of them, who thought that his captain was in the secret, asked that officer one evening, When they were to take up arms against the emperor? The captain, surprised, had recourse to dissimulation, and easily drew from the soldier all that he knew of the conspiracy. It was nine o'clock at night. Passick was put under arrest; but found means to slip into the hands of a man who had been placed as a spy over him by the Princess Dashkoff, a scrap of paper containing these words, "Proceed to execution this instant, or we are undone." The man was desired to carry it to the Hetman, by whom he would be handsomely rewarded; but he hurried with it to the princess, who instantly communicated the intelligence to the other conspirators. She herself put on man's apparel, and hastened to the place where she was accustomed to meet Orloff and his friends; where she found them, as impatient as herself to carry their plot into immediate execution.

During this awful crisis the empress was at Peterhoff, at the distance of 25 versts from St Petersburg; and one of the brothers of Gregory Orloff, named Alexis, undertook to find her out, whilst he himself, with his other brother and Bibikoff his friend, repaired to the barracks for the purpose of instructing the soldiers of their party how to act on the first signal. Alexis Orloff carried with him a short note from the Princess Dashkoff, but neglected to deliver it; and the empress, being suddenly roused from a sound sleep, was much alarmed, when she saw at the side of her bed a soldier of whom she knew nothing. Her alarm was increased when the stranger said, "Your majesty has not a moment to lose; get ready to follow me;" and instantly disappeared. She rose, however, and calling her woman Ivanovna, they disguised themselves in such a manner that they could not be known by the sentinels about the palace; and the soldier returning, they hur-

ried with him to a coach which was waiting at the garden gate. Orloff took the reins, but drove with such fury that the horses soon fell down; and they were obliged to travel part of the way on foot. They had not, however, gone far, when they met a light country cart; and she who was aspiring to the throne of the greatest empire in the world, was glad to enter the capital of that empire in this humble vehicle.

It was seven in the morning when she arrived in St Petersburg; and to the soldiers, who gathered about her in great numbers, she said, that "her danger had driven her to the necessity of coming to ask their assistance; that the Tzar had intended, that very night, to put her and her son to death; and that she had so great confidence in their dispositions, as to put herself entirely into their hands." They immediately shouted, "Long live the empress!" And the chaplain of one of the regiments fetching a crucifix, received their oaths of fidelity.

The troops, however, were not unanimous in this revolt. Though Gregory Orloff was treasurer of the artillery, and well enough beloved by the soldiers, that corps refused to follow him until he should produce the orders of Villebois their general; and that officer, withheld either by fidelity to the emperor or by fear, presumed to speak to Catharine of the obstacles which yet remained for her to surmount; adding, that she ought to have foreseen them. She haughtily replied, that "she had not sent for him to ask what she ought to have foreseen, but to know how he intended to act." "To obey your majesty," returned Villebois; and putting himself at the head of his regiment, he immediately joined the conspirators. So ripe indeed were the minds of all men for this revolt, that in the space of two hours the empress found herself surrounded by 2000 warriors, together with great part of the inhabitants of Peterburgh; and with that numerous train of attendants she repaired to the church of Kaian, where the archbishop of Novogorod, setting the Imperial crown on her head, proclaimed her sovereign of all the Russias, declaring, at the same time, Paul Petrovitch her successor.

Matters had now proceeded by much too far to admit of any compromise between Catharine and her husband: but had the infatuated Tzar put his affairs wholly into the hands of Marshal Munich, that intrepid veteran would have tumbled the empress from her throne almost as quickly as she had got possession of it. He acted, however, a very different part. Upon receiving intelligence of what had been done at St Petersburg, he asked indeed the Marshal's advice, but suffered himself to be guided by his mistress and timid companions. Through their terrors and his own irresolution opportunities were lost which could never be recovered; for though his Hollstein guards, with tears in their eyes, swore that they were all ready to sacrifice their lives in his service, and though the old Marshal offered to lead them against the rebels, saying to the emperor, "I will go before you, and their swords shall not reach you till they have pierced my body," he was persuaded to treat with the empress, to acknowledge his misconduct, and to offer to share with her the sovereign power. At last he was weak enough to abandon his troops, and to surrender at discretion to his consort; whose creatures hurried him from Oranienbaum to Peterhoff, stripped him of all his clothes, and after leaving him for some

Catharine, time in his shirt, a butt to the outrages of an insolent soldiery, threw over him an old morning gown, and shut him up alone, with a guard at the door of his wretched apartment. On the 29th of June, O. S.* 1762, Count Panin was sent to him by the empress; and after a long conference, prevailed with him to write and sign a solemn resignation of his crown, and a declaration of his utter incapacity to govern so great an empire.

The revolution was now complete, and Peter seemed to enjoy some composure of mind; but in the evening he was carried a prisoner to Ropscha, a small Imperial palace, at the distance of 20 versts from Peterhoff, where he was murdered on the 17th of July, just one week after his deposition. Of the manner of his death different accounts have been given. By some he is said to have been poisoned; by others, to have been strangled by one of the Orloffs; and a few have thought that he perished by the same means as Henry VI. of England. Whether the empress was accessory to his death is not known; though it is certain, that so far from making any inquiry after his murderers, she affected to believe that he had died naturally of the piles!

The first care of Catharine was to reward those who had been the principal actors in the revolt. Panin was made prime minister; the Orloffs received the title of Count; and the favourite Gregory was appointed lieutenant-general of the Russian armies, and knight of the order of St Alexander Nefsky, the second order of the empire. Several officers of the guards were promoted, of whom 24 received considerable estates; and among the soldiers, whom she treated with the greatest affability, brandy and beer were liberally distributed. The chancellor Bestucheff, who had been the most inveterate enemy of Peter, was recalled from his exile, restored to his rank of field-marshal, and had an annual pension settled upon him of 20,000 rubles. To the friends of the emperor she behaved with great moderation. Prince George, whom he had constituted Duke of Courland, was indeed obliged to renounce his title; but the administration of Holstein was committed to him, and he ever after served the empress with zeal and fidelity.

The news of the revolution was soon spread over Europe; and none of the sovereigns, though they knew by what steps Catharine had mounted the throne, hesitated for a moment to acknowledge her title. She was not, however, at perfect ease in her own mind; nor was her right recognised by all her subjects. Tho' she published manifestos, setting forth the intentions of the late emperor towards her and her son, which made resistance necessary; though in these papers she attributed her elevation to the wishes of her people and the providence of God; and though she called upon all who were sincerely attached to the orthodox faith of the Greek church, to consider the sudden death of Peter as the judgment of heaven in favour of the revolution—yet in the distant provinces no exultations were heard; both soldiers and peasants observed a gloomy silence. Even at Moscow, so great was the disaffection to Catharine's government, that it was some time before she could venture to go to that city to be crowned; and she found in it at last so cold a reception, that she very quickly returned to St Petersburg.

Nor was this the only cause of her uneasiness. The connection between Orloff and her became visible, and gave just offence to her other friends. The princess of

Dashikoff first perceived it; and when she presumed to Catharine expostulate with the empress on the meanness and imprudence of her passion, she was banished from the court to Moscow. Count Panin and the Hetman saw with indignation that they had dethroned the grandson of Peter the Great, to aggrandise a rude and low born upstart. Cabals and conspiracies were entered into by high and low, both against Catharine and against her favourite; and it required all her abilities and firmness to preserve at once her throne and her lover. On one occasion she hoped to obtain from the Princess Dashikoff sufficient proof that Panin and the Hetman of the Kosacks were concerned in a plot which had just been discovered; and with this view she wrote to her a letter of four pages, filled with the most tender epithets and the most magnificent promises, conjuring her in the name of their long standing friendship, to reveal what she knew of the recent conspiracies. With becoming magnanimity, the princess replied, "Madam, I have heard nothing; but if I had heard any thing, I should take good care how I spoke of it. What is it you require of me? That I should expire upon a scaffold? I am ready to mount it."

Catharine, despairing of conquering such a spirit, attempted to attach to her those whom she dared not to punish. Some of the inferior conspirators were banished to Siberia, while Panin and the Hetman, whom she most dreaded, received additional marks of her favour. In the mean time, to gain the affections of the people at large, she paid the utmost attention to the administration of justice; formed magnificent establishments for the education of the youth of both sexes; founded hospitals for orphans, for the sick, and for lying-in women; invited foreigners of all nations, possessed of any merit, to settle in different parts of her vast territories; increased the naval force of the empire; and gave such encouragement to the cultivation of every elegant and useful art, that in the short space of a year and a half from her accession to the throne, the national improvement of Russia was visible.

In the good fortune and glory of Catharine, no one rejoiced more sincerely than Count Poniatowsky. He approached towards the confines of Russia, and wrote to her in the tenderest style of congratulation, requesting permission to pay his respects to her in the capital of her empire. It is not improbable that he flattered himself with the hopes that she would give him her hand in marriage, and thus raise him to the throne of the Tzars; but she had promised to the Empress Elizabeth, that she would never again see the count; and to that promise she at present adhered. She wrote to him, however, in the most affectionate terms; and tho' she gave him no encouragement to repair to St Petersburg, she assured him that she had other prospects in view for his aggrandisement, and that he might depend upon her perpetual friendship: and she soon appeared to be as good as her word. On the death of Augustus III. she raised her former favourite to the throne of Poland, in opposition to the wishes of the courts of Vienna and Versailles, as well as of a great majority of the Polish nobles. She defeated the intrigues of the two foreign courts by more skilfully conducted intrigues of her own; and, by pouring her armies into the republic, she so completely overawed the nuncios, that Poniatowsky was chosen by the unanimous suffrages of the

the diet which met for the election of a sovereign; and, on the 7th of September 1764, was proclaimed King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, by the name of Stanislaus Augustus.

Whilst she was thus disposing of foreign kingdoms, she was kept under perpetual dread of being tumbled from the throne of her own vast empire. Her want of title to that throne was now seen by all ranks of her subjects; the good qualities of Peter the third were remembered, and his failings and faults forgotten. His fate was universally lamented; and, except the conspirators, who may be said to have embroiled their hands in his blood, there was hardly a Russian who did not regret that the sovereignty had passed from the ancient family of the Tzars to a foreigner, allied only by marriage to the blood royal. Even the conspirators themselves had lost much of their regard for Catharine. The princess of Dashkoff was a second time banished to Moscow; and, to magnify her own importance, she spoke freely of the means by which the empress, whom she accused of ingratitude, had been raised to the throne. The inhabitants of Moscow, who never favoured the usurpation, were thus made ripe for a revolt. At St Petersburg, Count Panin felt himself uneasy under the predominant influence of the favourite, and tried in vain to divert Catharine's affections to a new object. She received a few secret visits from a handsome young man, and then appointed him to a lucrative and honourable employment in some distant province of the empire; when Orloff recovered his former ascendancy, which through his own carelessness he had nearly lost. In this state of the public mind, conspiracies were very frequent; and as the general object of them was to place on the throne prince Ivan, who was again languishing in the dungeon from which Peter had taken him, the empress had given to his guard an order, signed by her own hand, to put that unfortunate prince to death, should any attempt be made to liberate him from his prison. An attempt was made by a very inferior officer, as some have supposed, by the instructions of Catharine, and her bloody order was instantly obeyed. The assassins were rewarded, and promoted in the army; but the officer who attempted to rescue the prince was condemned to death, and suffered unexpectedly the sentence of the law. The brothers and sisters of Ivan, who had been kept in a prison different from his, were sent to Denmark; and, to provide them with necessaries suitable to their rank, the empress made them a present of 200,000 rubles, and paid annually to the maintenance of their dignity a pension of thirty thousand.

The throne of Catharine was now firmly established by the death or renunciation of every person who was descended of the imperial family; and she had leisure to turn her thoughts to the aggrandisement of the empire. It was soon seen that this was the object which she had in view when she raised Count Poniatowsky to the throne of Poland, and that she was not actuated on that occasion by any remains of her former attachment. We have elsewhere shown (see POLAND, Encycl. n° 98—115) under what pretences she invaded the kingdom of him who had formerly been one of her most favoured lovers, and by what means she annexed great part of it to the territories of Russia. But it is not through her wars that in this article we mean to trace her cha-

racter: It is not as a sovereign and heroine that her Catharine's life is entitled to a place in a general repository of arts, sciences, and miscellaneous literature, but as a patroness of art and of science, and as the legislatrix of a vast empire, who employed all her talents and all her power for the civilization of a great part of the human race.

Under the article RUSSIA (Encycl.), we have mentioned the famous code of laws for a great empire, and the proposed convention of deputies from all the classes, which Catharine and the princess Dashkoff so artfully employed as means to bring about the revolution which seated the former on the throne. The states actually met in the ancient capital of the empire, and the sovereign's instructions for framing a new code of laws was read amidst reiterated bursts of applause. All present extolled the sagacity, the wisdom, the humanity of the empress; but fear and flattery had a greater share in these exclamations than any just knowledge of the subject. The deputies of the Samoiedes alone had the courage to speak freely. One of them stood up, and, in the name of himself and his brethren, said, "We are a simple and honest people. We quietly tend our reindeer. We are in no want of a new code; but make laws for the Russians, our neighbours, that may put a stop to their depredations." The following sittings did not pass so quietly. A debate about the liberation of the boors was carried on with such warmth, that fatal consequences were to be apprehended; and the deputies were dismissed to their respective provinces in the manner which we have elsewhere related. Previous, however, to the dissolution of this assembly, the members were required to signalize the meeting by some conspicuous act of gratitude; and, by a general acclamation, the titles of GREAT, WISE, PRUDENT, AND MOTHER OF THE COUNTRY, were decreed to the empress. With assumed modesty she accepted only of the last, "as the most benign and glorious recompence for her labours and solicitudes in behalf of a people whom she loved."

For that people she did indeed labour, and labour most usefully. She introduced into the administration of justice the greatest reformation of which the half-civilized state of Russia would perhaps admit. She spared neither trouble nor expense to diffuse over the empire the light of science, and the benefits of useful and elegant arts; and she protected, as far as she could, the poor from the oppressions of the rich. About the middle of 1767, she conceived the idea of sending several learned men to travel through the interior of her vast dominions, to determine the geographical position of the principal places, to mark their temperature, and to examine into the nature of their soil, their vegetable and mineral productions, and the manners of the people by whom they were inhabited. To this employment she appointed Pallas, Gmelin, Euler, and many others of the highest eminence in the republic of letters; from whose journals of these interesting travels large additions have been made to the general stock of useful knowledge. This survey of the empire, and the maps made from it, had Catharine done nothing else, would alone have been sufficient to render her name immortal. Well convinced in her own mind, that it is not so much by the power of arms, as by precedence in science, that nations obtain a conspicuous place in the annals of the world, with a laudable zeal she encouraged

Catharine. Catharine encouraged artists and scholars of all denominations. She granted new privileges to the two academies of sciences and the arts; encouraged such of the youth as had behaved well in these national institutes, to travel for further improvement over Europe, by bestowing upon them, for three years, large pensions to defray their expence; and, to remove as much as possible the Russian prejudice against all kinds of learning, she granted patents of nobility to those who, during their education, had conducted themselves with propriety, and become proficient in any branch of useful or elegant knowledge. Still farther to encourage the fine arts in her dominions, she assigned an annual sum of 5000 rubles for the translation of foreign literary works into the Russian language.

In the year 1768, the small-pox raged at St Petersburg, and proved fatal to vast numbers of all ranks and of every age. The empress was desirous to introduce the practice of inoculation among her subjects; and resolved to set the example by having herself and her son inoculated. With this view, she applied for a physician from England: and Dr Thomas Dimsdale of Hertford being recommended to her, he repaired with his son to the capital of Russia, where he inoculated first the empress, then the grand duke, and afterwards many of the nobility. The experiment proving successful, he was created a baron of the empire, appointed actual counsellor of state, and physician to her imperial majesty, with a pension of L. 500 sterling a-year, to be paid him in England, besides L. 10,000 which he immediately received. So popular was the empress at this period, that, by a decree of the senate, the anniversary of her recovery from the small-pox was enjoined to be celebrated as a religious festival; and it has ever since been observed as such.

She was now engaged in war with the Turks, of which a sufficient account for a work of this nature has been given under the title TURKEY (Encycl.); but there was one transaction of her and her friends, of which no mention was made in that article, though it is of importance to him who would form a just estimate of her personal character.

We have noticed the sensuality of the empress Elizabeth. She bore three children to the grand venerable Alexey Gregorievitch Razumoffsky, to whom, indeed, she is said to have been clandestinely married. Of these children the youngest was a girl, brought up under the name of prince's Tarrakanoff. Prince Radzivil, who has been mentioned in the article POLAND (Encycl.), irritated at Catharine's cruelties to his countrymen, conceived the project of placing the young prince on the throne of her ancestors; and, having gained over the persons to whom her education was entrusted, he carried her off to Rome as a place of safety. Catharine, in return, seized his large estates; and he and the prince were reduced to extreme poverty. Radzivil repaired to Poland in order to learn what could be done to forward his great enterprise; and scarcely had he arrived there when an offer was made to restore to him his possessions, upon condition of his carrying his ward to St Petersburg. This he refused; but had the base-

ness to promise, that he would give himself no farther concern about the daughter of Elizabeth; and he was put in possession of all his estates.

By the instructions of the empress, Alexius Orloff, who nominally commanded the Russian fleet at the Dardanelles, repaired to Rome, got access to young Tarrakanoff, and found means to persuade her that all Russia was ready to revolt from Catharine, and place her on the throne of her mother. To convince her of his sincerity, he pretended to feel for her the tenderest and most respectful passion; and the unsuspecting lady was induced to accept of him as a husband. The Russian who had assassinated the grandson of Peter the Great, did not hesitate to seduce and betray his granddaughter. Under pretence of having the marriage ceremony performed according to the rites of the Greek church, he suborned some subaltern villains to personate priests and lawyers; thus combining profanation with imposture against the unprotected and too confident Tarrakanoff.

Having been treated for some days, both at Rome and at Leghorn, with all the respect due to a sovereign, the unsuspecting princess expressed a wish to go on board a Russian ship of war. This was just what Orloff wanted. Attended by a numerous and obsequious train, she was rowed from the shore in a boat with magnificent ensigns, hoisted upon the deck of the ship in a splendid chair, and immediately handcuffed. In vain did she throw herself at the feet of her pretended husband, and conjure him by every thing tender which had passed between them. She was carried down into the hold; the next day the vessel sailed for St Petersburg; where, upon her arrival, the princess was shut up in the fortress; and what became of her since was never known. Such were the means which Catharine scrupled not to employ in order to get rid of all pretenders to her throne.

Soon after this service rendered to her by Alexius Orloff, she dismissed his brother Gregory from her favour, and connected herself with Vassilitchikoff, a sub-lieutenant of the guards. The former favourite had indeed become insolent, and, as Catharine thought, ungrateful. He aspired to nothing less than the throne. From love to himself and to a son which she had born to him, she offered to enter into a secret marriage; but with this proposal the proud prince (A) was not satisfied, and hoped that his refusal would impel her to receive him publicly as her husband and partner in power. He was mistaken. She divested him of all his employments; but gave him a pension of 150,000 rubles, a handsome service of plate, and an estate with 6000 peasants upon it; and, thus enriched, he set out upon a journey through various parts of Europe. He returned, however, much sooner than was expected; the new favourite was handsomely rewarded, and sent to a distance; Orloff was restored to all his offices, and his baleful influence was again felt.

He attempted to persuade the empress to dismiss Panin from the court; but the grand duke interposed in behalf of his old preceptor; and, for once, Catharine listened to the entreaties of her son. When a dreadful rebellion, under a Kofak of the name of Pugetshoff, who

who pretended to be Peter III. escaped from his assassins, was shaking the throne to its foundation—the influence of Orloff was such as to prevent the empress, for some time, from employing her ablest general against the rebels, because that general was Panin, brother to the minister. Danger, however, at last prevailed over the favourite: Panin was sent against Pugethoff; the rebellion was crushed; and Catharine found leisure to give something like a legal constitution to the empire. In that work, the laws and regulations established for the government of the various provinces, and for the equitable administration of justice through the whole of her vast dominions, evinces the greatest wisdom and sagacity in their author, as well as a proper regard to the practicable liberties and rights of men. In the capital, she established the most perfect police, by which the internal tranquillity of a great city was, perhaps, ever maintained; and whilst her private conduct was far from correct, she was acting in the capacity of sovereign, so as to deserve, indeed, the appellation of Mother of her people.

To follow her through all her wars and intrigues with foreign courts, would swell this article to the size of a volume. Such a narrative, too, belongs rather to the history of Russia than to the memoirs of Catharine; in which it is the business of the biographer to develop the private character of the woman rather than to detail the exploits of the sovereign. Her partition of Poland, and afterwards the annihilation of it as an independent republic; her encroachments on the territories of the grand signior; her formation of the armed neutrality; the influence which she maintained over the courts of Sweden and Denmark; and the art with which she threw the weight of Russia sometimes into the scale of Austria, and sometimes into that of Prussia, just as the interests of her own dominions required the one or the other to preponderate—shew how admirably she was qualified to guide the helm of a great empire in all its transactions with foreign states. We speak not of the equity of her proceedings; for it must be confessed, that equity formed no barrier against her ambition; and that she never failed to subjugate those whom she pretended to take under her protection. Her ruling passion was to enlarge her own territories, already so very extensive; and, for the attainment of that object, she contrived the most judicious plans, which she executed with vigour. In this part of her conduct, however, she has been equalled by other monarchs; but in the zeal and the wisdom with which she endeavoured to introduce among her half savage subjects the blessings of knowledge and industry, she stands unrivalled, except, perhaps, by her predecessor Peter the Great. Of this we need bring no other proof, in addition to what has been already stated, than that she founded in St Petersburg alone thirty-one seminaries, where 6800 children of both sexes were educated at the annual expense to the government of 754,335 rubles. She superintended herself the education of her grandchildren, and wrote for them books of instruction. If it be true, that every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year, with what veneration should we look upon the empress of Russia, could we forget the means by which she obtained that elevation from which she frequently descend-

ed for a similar employment? This she did, not for her own descendants alone, but also for the children of others; of whom she had always a great number in her apartments, who shared in the instruction given to her grandchildren, and whose carefess she returned with extreme complaisance.

Her greatest weakness was surely that gross passion which her panegyrists have dignified with the name of love: but to such an appellation it had no claim, if love be any thing more than a sexual appetite. Besides Gregory Orloff, she had not fewer than ten favourites after the death of her husband; and of these she seems to have felt a refined affection for none but Lanskoï, a young Pole of a very ancient family, and of elegant manners, and the famous Potemkin, to whom she is said secretly to have given her hand, and who preferred her friendship, if not her affection, to the end of his life. To Lanskoï, whose education had been much neglected, she condescended to become preceptrix; and, as he made great progress in the acquisition of useful knowledge, she admired in him her own creation. Potemkin, though not amiable, deserved her favour for the fidelity and abilities with which he served her, both in the council and in the field; and in him, when she had ceased to look on him with the eyes of love, she respected the intriguing politician and intrepid commander, who had formed plans for driving the Turks out of Europe, and setting her on the throne of Byzantium. Her other favourites had nothing to recommend them but masculine beauty and corporeal strength. One of them, however, thought it necessary to have a library in the grand house, of which the empress, upon receiving him into favour, had made him a present; and desired the principal bookseller to fill his shelves. The man asked him what books he would please to have. "You understand that better than I (replied the favourite); that is your business. You know the proper assortments; I have defined a large room to receive them. Let there be large books at the bottom, and smaller and smaller up to the top; that is the way they stand in the empress's library!" In the conversation of such men, the cultivated mind of Catharine could enjoy no interchange of sentiments.

We know not whether that more than Asiatic magnificence, which she displayed on every public occasion, should be considered as an instance of weakness or of wisdom. If she delighted in balls, and masquerades, and sumptuous entertainments, and dress loaded with jewels and every kind of splendid ornament, for their own sakes, she betrayed a weakness unworthy of that sovereign who held in her hand the balance of Europe, and at whose nod the greatest powers of Asia trembled: but if she introduced such splendor into her court merely to divert the attention of the Russians from the means by which she got possession of the throne, and to ween them from their own savage and slovenly manners; even this may perhaps be considered as one of her most masterly strokes in politics.

Her ambition was boundless; but, if such a phrase may be allowed, it was not always true ambition. When the French republic had established itself on the ruins of monarchy, and was propagating new theories of government through all Europe, true ambition would surely have led the autocratrix of the north to unite her forces with those of the coallesced powers, in order

Catharine, to crush the horrid hydra before its anarchical principles could be introduced among her own barbarous subjects. Such would certainly have been the advice of her favourite Potemkin, who longed to lead a Russian army into France, even before the murder of the unfortunate Louis. That general, however, had died in October 1791; and when Britain, Austria, and Prussia, were leagued against the new republic, Catharine looked coolly on, in hopes, it is probable, of availing herself of their weakness, when exhausted by a long and bloody war. She gave refuge, indeed, in her dominions to many emigrants from France, and sent a squadron of ships to co-operate with the navy of England; but in this last measure she regarded merely her own immediate interest; for her crazy ships were repaired by British carpenters at the expence of the British government, and her officers had an opportunity of learning the evolutions of the British navy. She had likewise other prospects in view when she lent to the allies this slender aid. She meditated a new war with Turkey; and, depending upon meeting with no opposition, if she should not receive assistance from England and Austria, she flattered herself with accomplishing her darling project of driving the Ottomans out of Europe, and of reigning in Constantinople. But she was disappointed. On the morning of the 9th of November 1796, she was seized with what her principal physician judged a fit of apoplexy; and, at 10 o'clock in the evening of the following day, expired, in the 68th year of her age, leaving behind her the character of one of the greatest sovereigns that ever swayed a sceptre.

After this long detail of the incidents of her life, it is needless to inform the reader that Catharine II. had no religion, and, of course, no principles of morality, which could induce her in every instance to do to others as she would have them do to her. She was a professed disciple of the French philosophers; by some of whom she was ridiculed, and by others cheated. The incense which she paid to the genius of Voltaire did not hinder him from frequently breaking his jests upon the autocratrix of Russia and her successive favourites; and Diderot, whom she cared less, sold to her an immense library, when he possessed hardly a book, and was obliged to ransack Germany and France for volumes to enable him to fulfil his bargain. Such is the friendship, and such the gratitude, which subsists among the amiable pupils of nature, and the philanthropic advocates for the rights of man.