Terrible Tsarinas

Winter Palace amid great pomp and celebration, in an extrava-

gant ceremony followed by all the courtiers swearing their oath

and kissing the hand of the regent, his enemies had not given up.

The new English minister in St. Petersburg, Edward Finch,

declared that the change of reign “has made less noise in Russia

than the changing of the Guard in Hyde Park”; but Field Marshal

Münnich warned Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich against

the tortuous machinations of Bühren, who he suggested was in-

tending to throw them both out in order to keep himself in power.

Even though he had been allied with the regent in the very recent

past, he said that he felt morally obliged to prevent him from go-

ing any further to the detriment of the legitimate rights of the

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family. According to him, for his next coup d’état, the ex-favorite

of the late empress Anna Ivanovna was counting on the Is-

mailovsky Regiment and the horse guard, one of which was under

the command of his brother Gustav, the other under his son. But

the Preobrazhensky Regiment was entirely at the behest of the

field marshal and this elite unit would be disposed to act, at the

proper time, against the ambitious Bühren. “If Your Highness

wishes,” Münnich told the princess, “I would relieve you of this

treacherous man in one hour.”9

However, Anna Leopoldovna had no stomach for such ad-

ventures. Frightened at the thought of attacking a man as power-

ful and cunning as Bühren, she balked. However, having con-

sulted her husband, she changed her mind and decided, while

some trembling, to play all or nothing. During the night of No-

vember 8, 1740, a hundred grenadiers and three officers of the

Preobrazhensky Regiment, sent by Münnich, burst into the room

where Bühren was sleeping; they yanked him out of bed and, de-

spite his cries for help, they beat him with their rifle butts and

carried him out, semi-conscious, to an enclosed carriage. In the

wee hours of the day, he was transported to the Schlüsselburg

Fortress on Lake Ladoga, where he was methodically whipped.

They needed a charge that could be substantiated before they

could have him imprisoned, so he was accused of precipitating the

death of the empress by having her ride on horseback at the

wrong time. Other crimes, added to this one at the appropriate

time, were enough to have him condemned to death on April 8,

1741. First, he was to be drawn and quartered, but his sentence

was commuted immediately to exile in perpetuity to a remote vil-

lage in Siberia; and in one fell swoop, Anna Leopoldovna was pro-

claimed regent.

To celebrate the happy end of this period of intrigues, usur-

pations and treason, she rescinded the preceding government’s

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ban on soldiers’ and warrant officers’ visiting cabarets. This first

liberal measure was greeted by an outburst of joy in the bar-

racks — and in the bars. Everyone hoped this was a sign of

broader leniency in general. The name of the new regent was

blessed everywhere and, with hers, that of the man who had just

brought her to power. Only the mean-spirited happened to notice

that Bühren was being replaced by Münnich. One German was

taking the place of another, without any concern for Muscovite

tradition. How long would the empire have to endure a foreign

master? And why was it always a member of the weaker sex that

came to occupy the throne? Was there no other choice for Russia

but to be ruled by an empress, with Germans at her back, whis-

pering in her ear? Sad as it may be for a country to smother under

a woman’s skirts, how much worse it is when that woman herself

is under the influence of a foreigner. The most pessimistic observ-

ers reckoned that Russia would be threatened with a double ca-

lamity as a long as real men and real Russians did not stand up

against the reign of besotted sovereigns and German lovers. These

prophets of gloom saw the matriarchy and the Prussian takeover

as two facets of a curse that had befallen the fatherland since the

demise of Peter the Great.

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Footnotes

1. The “Frenchified” version of his name, plus a pejorative ending, was used

to indicate the excesses committed by Bühren and his clique.

2. Ancestor of Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor.”

3. His great-grandson Dmitri Miliutin, War Minister under Alexander II,

would retain these evocative emblems on his blazon.

4. Cf. Brian-Chaninov, op. cit.

5. Cf. Kraft: Description de la maison de glace, and K. Waliszewski, op. cit.

6. Cf. Daria Oliver, op. cit.

7. Letter dated 10 December 1740, cited by K. Waliszewski, op. cit.

8. Cf. Brian-Chaninov, op. cit.

9. Comments reported in K. Waliszewski, op. cit.

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VI

ONE ANNA AFTER ANOTHER

Still dazed by her sudden accession to power, Anna Leo-

poldovna was not so much interested in her political triumph as

in the return to St. Petersburg of her last lover, whom the tsarina