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Authors: Wilkie Collins
Her story is related here, not only because it seemed to contain some elements of interest in itself, but also because the facts of which it is composed may claim to be of some little historical importance, as helping to expose the unendurable corruptions of society in France before the Revolution. It may not be amiss for those persons whose historical point of view obstinately contracts its range to the Reign of Terror, to look a little further back — to remember that the hard case of oppression here related had been, for something like one hundred years, the case (with minor changes of circumstance) of the forlorn many against the powerful few all over France — and then to consider whether there was not a reason and a necessity, a dreadful last necessity, for the French Revolution. That Revolution has expiated, and is still expiating, its excesses, by political failures, which all the world can see. But the social good which it indisputably effected remains to this day. Take, as an example, the administration of justice in France at the present time. Whatever its shortcomings may still be, no innocent Frenchwoman could be treated now as an innocent Frenchwoman was once treated at a period so little remote from our own time as the end of the last century.
NOOKS AND CORNERS OF HISTORY. — III.
A REVOLUTION which is serious enough to overthrow a reigning sovereign — which is short enough to last only nine hours — and which is peaceable enough to begin and end without the taking of a single life or the shedding of a drop of blood, is certainly a phenomenon in the history of human affairs which is worth being carefully investigated. Such a revolution actually happened, in the empire of Russia, little more than a century and a quarter ago. The narrative here attempted of its rise, its progress, and its end may be trusted throughout as faithful to the truth. Extraordinary as they may appear, the events described in this fragment of history are matters of fact from first to last.
We start with a famous Russian character — Peter the Great. His son, who may be not unfairly distinguished as Peter the Small, died in the year seventeen hundred and thirty. With the death of this last personage the political difficulties arose which ended in the easy pulling down of one sovereign ruler at midnight, and the easy setting up of another by nine o’clock the next morning.
Besides the son whom he left to succeed him, Peter the Great had a daughter, whose title was princess, and whose name was Elizabeth. Peter’s widow, the famous Empress Catherine, being a far-seeing woman, made a will which contained the expression of her wishes in regard to the succession to the throne, and which plainly and properly designated the Princess Elizabeth (there being no Salic law in Russia) as the reigning sovereign to be chosen after the death of her brother, Peter the Small. Nothing, apparently, could be more straightforward than the course to be followed at that time in appointing a new ruler over the Russian people.
But there happened to be living at Court two noblemen — Prince D’Olgorowki and Count Osterman — who had an interest of their own in complicating the affairs connected with the succession.
These two distinguished personages had possessed considerable power and authority under the feeble reign of Peter the Small, and they knew enough of his sister’s resolute and self-reliant character to doubt what might become of their court position and their political privileges after the Princess Elizabeth was seated on the throne. Accordingly they lost no time in nominating a rival candidate of their own choosing, whom they dexterously raised to the imperial dignity, before there was time for the partisans of the Princess Elizabeth to dispute the authority under which they acted. The new sovereign, thus unjustly invested with power, was a woman — Anne, Dowager Duchess of Courland — and the pretense under which Prince D’Olgorowki and Count Osterman proclaimed her Empress of Russia was that Peter the Small had confidentially communicated to them, on his death-bed, a desire that the Dowager Duchess should be chosen as the sovereign to succeed him.
The main result of the Dowager Duchess’s occupation of the throne was the additional complication of the confused political affairs of Russia. The new Empress had an eye to the advancement of her family; and among the other relatives for whom she provided was a niece, named Catherine, whom she married to the Prince of Brunswick, brother-in-law of the King of Prussia. The first child born of the marriage was a boy, named Ivan. Before he had reached the age of two years, the new Empress died; and, when her will was opened, it was discovered, to the amazement of every one, that she had appointed this child to succeed her on the throne of Russia. The private motive which led the Empress to take this extraordinary course was her desire to place the sovereign power in the hands of one of her favorites, the Duke De Biren, by nominating that nobleman as the guardian of the infant Ivan. To accomplish this purpose, she had not only slighted the legitimate claims of Peter the Great’s daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, but had also entirely overlooked the interests of Ivan’s mother, who naturally felt that she had a right to ascend the throne, as the nearest relation of the deceased empress, and the mother of the child who was designated to be the future emperor. To the bewilderment and dissatisfaction thus produced, a further element of confusion was added by the total incapacity of the Duke De Biren to occupy creditably the post of authority which had been assigned to him. Before he had been long in office, he gave way altogether under the double responsibility of guiding the affairs of Russia and directing the education of the future emperor. Ivan’s mother saw the chance of asserting her rights which the weakness of the duke afforded to her. She was a resolute woman; and she seized her opportunity by banishing Biren to Siberia, and taking his place as regent of the empire and guardian of her infant son.
Such was the result, thus far, of the great scramble for the crown which began with the death of the son of Peter the Great. Such was the position of affairs in Russia at the time when the revolution broke out.
Through all the contentions which distracted the country, the Princess Elizabeth lived, in the retirement of her own palace, waiting secretly, patiently, and vigilantly for the fit opportunity of asserting her rights. She was, in every sense of the word, a remarkable woman, and she numbered two remarkable men among the adherents of her cause. One was the French ambassador at the court of Russia, the Marquis De la Chetardie. The other was the surgeon of Elizabeth’s household, a German, named Lestoc. The Frenchman had money to spend; the German had brains to plot. Both were men of tried courage and resolute will; and both were destined to take the foremost places in the coming struggle. It is certainly not the least curious circumstance in the extraordinary revolution which we are now about to describe, that it was planned and carried out by two foreigners. In the struggle for the Russian throne, the natives of the Russian soil were used only as instruments to be handled and directed at the pleasure of the French ambassador and the German surgeon.
The Marquis and Lestoc, watching the signs of the times, arrived at the conclusion that the period of the banishment of the Duke De Biren and of the assumption of the supreme power by the mother of Ivan, was also the period for effecting the revolution which was to place the Princess Elizabeth on the throne of her ancestors. The dissatisfaction in Russia had, by this time, spread widely among all classes. The people chafed under a despotism inflicted on them by foreigners. The native nobility felt outraged by their exclusion from privileges which had been conceded to their order under former reigns, before the aliens from Courland had seized on power. The army was for the most part to be depended on to answer any bold appeal that might be made to it in favor of the daughter of Peter the Great. With these chances in their favor, the Frenchman and the German set themselves to the work of organizing the scattered elements of discontent. The Marquis opened his well-filled purse; and Surgeon Lestoc prowled about the city and the palace with watchful eyes, with persuasive tongue, with delicately bribing hands. The great point to be achieved was to tamper successfully with the regiment on duty at the palace; and this was skillfully and quickly accomplished by Lestoc. In the course of a few days only, he contrived to make sure of all the considerable officers of the regiment, and of certain picked men from the ranks besides. On counting heads, the members of the military conspiracy thus organized came to thirty-three. Exactly the same number of men had once plotted the overthrow of Julius Cæsar, and had succeeded in the attempt.
Matters had proceeded thus far when the suspicions of the Duchess Regent (that being the title which Ivan’s mother had now assumed) were suddenly excited, without the slightest apparent cause to arouse them. Nothing dangerous had been openly attempted as yet, and not one of the conspirators had betrayed the secret. Nevertheless, the Duchess Regent began to doubt; and one morning she astonished and alarmed the Marquis and Lestoc by sending, without any previous warning, for the Princess Elizabeth, and by addressing a series of searching questions to her at a private interview. Fortunately for the success of the plot, the daughter of Peter the Great was more than a match for the Duchess Regent. From first to last Elizabeth proved herself equal to the dangerous situation in which she was placed. The Duchess discovered nothing; and the heads of the thirty-three conspirators remained safe on their shoulders.
This piece of good fortune operated on the cunning and resolute Lestoc as a warning to make haste. Between the danger of waiting to mature the conspiracy and the risk of letting it break out abruptly before the organisation of it was complete, he chose the latter alternative. The Marquis agreed with him that it was best to venture everything before there was time for the suspicions of the Duchess to be renewed; and the Princess Elizabeth, on her part, was perfectly ready to be guided by the advice of her two trusty adherents. The fifteenth of January, seventeen hundred and forty-one, had been the day originally fixed for the breaking out of the revolution. Lestoc now advanced the period for making the great attempt by nine days. On the night of the sixth of January the Duchess Regent and the Princess Elizabeth were to change places, and the throne of Russia was to become once more the inheritance of the family of Peter the Great.
Between nine and ten o’clock, on the night of the sixth, Surgeon Lestoc strolled out, with careless serenity on his face, and devouring anxiety at his heart, to play his accustomed game of billiards at a French coffee-house. The stakes were ten ducats, and Lestoc did not play quite so well as usual that evening. When the clock of the coffee-house struck ten, he stopped, in the middle of the game, and drew out his watch.
“I beg ten thousand pardons,” he said to the gentleman with whom he was playing; “but I am afraid I must ask you to let me go before the game is done. I have a patient to see at ten o’clock, and the hour has just struck. Here is a friend of mine,” he continued, bringing forward one of the by-standers by the arm, “who will, with your permission, play in my place. It is quite immaterial to me whether he loses or whether he wins; I am merely anxious that your game should not be interrupted. Ten thousand pardons again. Nothing but the necessity of seeing a patient could have induced me to be guilty of this apparent rudeness. I wish you much pleasure, gentlemen, and I most unwillingly bid you good-night.”
With that polite farewell he departed. The patient whom he was going to cure was the sick Russian empire.
He got into his sledge, and drove off to the palace of the Princess Elizabeth. She trembled a little when he told her quietly that the hour had come for possessing herself of the throne; but, soon recovering her spirits, dressed to go out, concealed a knife about her in case of emergency, and took her place by the side of Lestoc in the sledge. The two then set forth together for the French embassy to pick up the second leader of the conspiracy.
They found the Marquis alone, cool, smiling, humming a gay French tune and quietly amusing himself by making a drawing. Elizabeth and Lestoc looked over his shoulder, and the former started a little when she saw what the subject of the drawing was. In the background appeared a large monastery, a grim, prison-like building, with barred windows and jealously closed gates; in the foreground were two high gibbets, and two wheels of the sort used to break criminals on. The drawing was touched in with extraordinary neatness and steadiness of hand; and the Marquis laughed gayly when he saw how seriously the subject represented had startled and amazed the Princess Elizabeth.
“Courage, madam!” he said. “I was only amusing myself by making a sketch illustrative of the future which we may all three expect if we fail in our enterprise. In an hour from this time you will be on the throne, or on your way to this ugly building.” (He touched the monastery in the background of the drawing lightly with the point of his pencil.) “In an hour from this time, also, our worthy Lestoc and myself will either be the two luckiest men in Russia, or the two miserable criminals who are bound on these” (he touched the wheels) “and hung up afterward on those” (he touched the gibbets). “You will pardon me, madam, for indulging in this ghastly fancy! I was always eccentric from childhood. My good Lestoc, as we seem to be quite ready, perhaps you will kindly precede us to the door, and allow me the honour of handing the Princess to the sledge?”