The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (41 page)

70
October 8, 1749.

71
Praskovia Ivanovna Shuvalova married Prince Nikolai Fedorovich Golitsyn.

72
In part 3 of her middle memoir, dated 1791, Catherine writes that she sent Baturin to Kamchatka in 1770, and that Beniovsky and his followers deserved to hang (167). She evidently did not know that Baturin had died in 1772. However, in 1773 she pardoned Beniovsky and his followers, allowing them to return to Russia. In a letter to Procurator General Prince Viazemsky (October 2, 1773), she explains that their request to return “shows how the Russian loves his Russia, and their trust in me and my mercy has touched my heart” (quoted in Böhme 2:102). This internal evidence indicates that parts 2 and 3 of the middle memoir, the so-called 1791 memoir, were written after part 1 (dated 1771), finished before October 1773, and only edited in 1791 (ix).

73
Her brothers were Peter and Karl Ernst.

74
February 17, 1750.

75
A white heavy powder used in medical ointments for burns.

76
Count Lynar arrived February 7, 1750.

77
By 1751, he had ten children, and eventually he had twelve.

78
Count Moritz Karl Lynar was the favorite of Anna Leopoldovna, regent (1740–41) for Ivan VI.

79
April 30, 1750.

80
As Catherine points out in part 3 of the middle memoir, “That meant that the Empress did not wish to have us as close to her apartment as we had been before” (181).

81
June 6, 1750.

82
September 17, 1750.

83
Praskovia Fedorovna Saltykova was married to Ivan V, Peter I’s half brother and co-ruler until Ivan’s death. Biron’s father, Karl Bühren, was a cornet in the Polish army.

84
Born 1716.

85
April 30 to June 8, 1751.

86
Lev Alexandrovich Naryshkin’s brother was Alexander, whose wife was Anna Nikitichna (née Rumiantseva); his sisters were Natalia, Maria, and Agrafena.

87
Natalia died in 1760.

88
Actually, November 2, 1751.

89
During and after the coup, she entrusted her son Paul to him.

90
Three of her sons ended up in prison.

91
From “Madame Choglokova replied” to “exist. Then” left out of the Russian Academy edition (1907) of Catherine’s works.

92
July 30, 1752.

93
October 20, 1752.

94
They actually departed on December 16 and arrived on December 20, 1752.

95
From “Meanwhile, Madame Choglokova” to “after Easter” left out of the Russian Academy edition (1907) of Catherine’s works.

96
Journal of the Court Quartermasters,
1753: “April 29. Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess deigned to be absent because of illness.”

97
To drill a hole in the skull to relieve pressure.

98
Nomad’s tent or covered wagon.

99
This was the practice of members of the religious sect called
Skoptsy.

100
Shah-Nadir (1688–1747), Shah of Persia (r. 1736–47), known as the Persian Napoleon or the Second Alexander, served Tahmasp II (1704–40) and took the name Tahmasp Kuli Khan, or “Tahmasp’s slave.”

101
Dictionnaire historique et critique
2 vol. (1697) by Pierre Bayle (1647–1706); 8 ed., 4 vol. (Amsterdam, 1740).

102
Journal of the Court Quartermaster,
1754: “September 20. Toward morning Her Imperial Highness Her Majesty Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna successfully gave birth. God has sent His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Paul Petrovich. In the eleventh hour, in the presence of Her Imperial Majesty, Grand Duke Paul Petrovich was brought from the chambers of Their Imperial Highnesses to the inner chambers of Her Imperial Majesty, and the successful birth is announced to the whole court through the raising of banners in the city and cannonades from all fortresses” (728).

103
In a dispatch from July 27, 1757, L’Hôpital notes “the love of the Empress for the son of the Grand Duchess, which they say belongs to Monsieur Saltykov” (quoted in Böhme 2:177).

104
November 6, 1754.

105
A religious ceremony held to celebrate the end of a woman’s confinement.

106
Journal of the Court Quartermaster,
1754: “November 1. Tuesday, Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess, on the occasion of the six weeks since Her Highness successfully gave birth, while seated on her bed, deigned to accept the humble congratulations of resident distinguished persons of both sexes, from ambassadors and other foreign ministers of the second rank” (728).

107
Voltaire’s
Annales de l’Empire depuis Charlemagne,
2 vols. (1753),
Abrégé de l’Histoire universelle
depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Charles V, 2 vol. (1753), and Histoire universelle, 2 vol. (Paris, 1754); Essai
sur l’histoire universelle,
or in its final form,
Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations
(1769); in 1765 he published the introduction separately as
La philosophie de l’histoire, par feu l’Abbé Bazin,
which he dedicated to Catherine. Catherine was reading Barre’s
History of Germany
in 1749 too.

108
Cesare Baronio (1538–1607),
Secular and Ecclesiastical History
(1588–1607),
Annales ecclesiastici,
in Russian translation
Deianiia tserkovnye i grazhdanskie ot r. Khr. do XIII stoletii
(1719) (in Böhme 2:184).

109
; Montesquieu, L’esprit des lois (1748) and Publius Cornelius Tacitus (55–117), The Annals (109 A.D.), an important 100-year history of Rome, beginning with Caesar Augustus.

110
A
trumeau
is a mirror having a painted or carved panel above or below the glass in the same frame.

111
The three days before Ash Wednesday, once a time of confession and absolution.

112
In 1760, Catherine made notes about this visit: “At the end of 1754, seeing that his affairs were in a state that threatened widespread bankruptcy, the Grand Duke decided to give me the task of putting things in order. At first I did not want to take this on, foreseeing the difficulty of remedying this hopeless situation, as well as the jealousy and envy that this would earn me, but I finally decided to agree to it; I could no longer refuse without offending the Grand Duke.” She takes us through his accounts. “I then put into writing all of Brockdorff ’s contradictory actions for and against the Shuvalovs, his accusations, and I gave this text to the Grand Duke. Brockdorff induced his master to reveal its contents to Count Alexander Shuvalov, who, trusting Brockdorff, believed me the author of everything against the Shuvalovs. They detested Chancellor Bestuzhev; these suspicions, and the fear that my relations with him might become harmful to them one day, hastened his fall. At that time they could not imagine that a consistent policy was the product of a woman’s mind, that this woman already had all of the small and great affairs of her husband in hand, that this woman would not tolerate any embezzlement, insinuations, injustice, etc.” (621–24)

113
May 23, 1755.

114
The opposite is probably true. With his toy soldiers and play regiments, Peter III followed the practice of Peter the Great, who as a young man had toy boats and regiments at his estate outside Moscow in Kolomenskoe.

115
Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams arrived June 12, 1755, and Count Stanislaw Poniatowski arrived at the end of the month.

116
November 10, 1755.

117
On January 16, 1756, in a surprise move, Frederick the Great signed the Whitehall Treaty with England, and on May 1, 1756, his spurned ally France signed the Versailles Treaty with Austria, which, by the end of the year, Russia signed too. The war began with Frederick the Great’s invasion of Saxony on August 18, 1756.

118
Count Andrei Alekseevich Bestuzhev-Riumin married Evdokia Danilovna Razumovkaia on May 5, 1747.

119
His daughter is Princess Elena Stepanovna Kurakina.

120
His son-in-law was Count Gavril Ivanovich Golovkin.

121
Duchess Albertine Friederike von Holstein-Gottorp died on December 22, 1755. Defeated by Russia in the Great Northern War (1700–21), Sweden retreated militarily, until in a backlash in the 1730s, Swedish nobles (the Hats) accepted French support against Russia. Their opponents (the Nightcaps, or Caps) looked to England, and after 1748, to Russia, for support; their dependence on Russia and a failed coup in 1755, by King Adolf Friedrich and his Prussian wife to restore an absolutist monarchy, weakened their position.

122
Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi (1704–95) was the illegitimate half brother of the Princess of Hessen-Hamburg; their father was Prince Ivan Iurevich Trubetskoi (1667–1750). The Princess of Hessen-Hamburg’s first husband was Prince Dmitry Antiokhovich Kantemir (1663–1723); their daughter Princess Ekaterina Dmitrievna Golitsyna (1720–61) married (in 1751) Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1721–93). Hospodar was the title given to princes and governors of Moldavia and Walachia (today Romania).

123
He departed in early November 1757.

124
The treaty between Russia and England of September 19/30, 1755, was ratified on February 1, 1756. Russia then signed the Treaty of Versailles with France and Austria on December 20/31, 1756.

125
He arrived on December 23 and presented his papers as minister on December 31, 1756.

126
“Baba Ptitsa” means pelican; it is a bird (“ptitsa”) that looks like a “baba,” an old woman.

127
Elizabeth first established a council in March 1756 to prepare for war with Prussia.

128
January 29, 1757.

129
May 6, 1757.

130
A religious service held to mark a victory.

131
According to Poniatowski, the Prussian King Frederick the Great said: “I am his Dulcinea; he has never seen me, and like Don Quixote, he has fallen in love with me.”
Mémoires du roi
Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski,
2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1914), 1:172.

132
August 6, 1758.

133
May 1764.

134
January 10, 1758.

135
Prussia and Saxony were the most powerful German states.

136
Maria Josepha was the oldest daughter of Emperor Joseph I.

137
May 30, 1758.

138
A sword knot is a looped strap, ribbon, etc., attached to the hilt of a sword as a support or ornament.

139
In a dispatch from July 27, 1757, L’Hôpital writes: “They say that the Grand Duchess is recently pregnant by Count Poniatowski” (quoted in Böhme 2:239).

140
September 8, 1757.

141
Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna (December 9, 1757, to March 8, 1759). Catherine has the year wrong.

142
The events Catherine assigns to this year in fact occurred in 1758. Catherine also wrote “1759,” the wrong year, in the margin.

143
Buturlin married on February 15, Strogonov on February 18, and Naryshkin on February 22, 1758.

144
February 14, 1758.

145
Poniatowski writes: “There was a Venetian jeweler who often took the Grand Chancellor’s and my letters to the Grand Duchess and brought the replies.”
Mémoires
1:319.

146
A conventicle is a small, clandestine meeting, in a pejorative sense.

147
By the manifesto of February 27, 1758.

148
Manifesto of April 5, 1759.

149
April 7, 1758.

150
“Today my damned nephew irritated me as never before” and “My nephew is a monster, the devil take him.” The spelling irregularities may be Catherine’s transcription or Elizabeth’s original notes.

151
Chevalier, a knight of an order (not a cavalier, or gentleman).

152
From “I have just said” to “hand at will” left out of the Russian Academy edition (1907) of Catherine’s works.

153
March 7, 1758.

154
Fedor Iakovlevich Dubiansky was married to Maria Konstantinovna Sharogorodskaia, the daughter of Konstantin Fedorovich Sharogorodsky (d. 1735), who had also been Elizabeth’s confessor (Böhme 2:271).

155
April 13, 1758.

156
Princess Johanna was in Hamburg; she arrived in Paris in July 1758, a refugee (because of her ties with Russia) from Prussia’s Seven Years’ War with Russia.

157
Abbé Prévost (1697–1763), et al., ed.
Histoire générale des voyages; ou, Nouvelle collection de toutes
les relations de voyages par mer et par terre, qui ont été publiées jusqu’à présent dans les di férentes langues de
toutes les nations connues . . . pour former un système complet d’histoire et de géographie moderne, qui representera l’état actuel de toutes les nations: enrichi de cartes géographiques . . . ,
20 vols. (Paris: Chez Didot, 1746–92).

158
Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert,
Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts
et des métiers,
58 vols. (1751–72).

159
Princess Sophie was baptized on April 23, 1729.

160
Prince Charles became Duke of Courland on November 16, 1758, and was invested on January 8, 1759.

161
Catherine dedicated part 2 of her middle memoir to him.

162
May 23, 1758.

163
June 17, 1757.

164
Catherine crossed out what she used in the memoir. Whatever she did not cross out is in italics.

165
Elizabeth has a stroke on September 8, 1757.

166
; December 9, 1757. Her daughter, Anna Petrovna, died on March 8, 1759; she never mentions her daughter’s death anywhere.

167
February 18 and 22, 1758.

168
February 14, 1758.

169
April 13, 1758.