Terrible Tsarinas

most brilliant promotion was granted to Dolgoruky, newly re-

turned from exile. Even subordinates (the most conscientious of

them) did well during this period when reparations were being

made for the injustices of the preceding reign. The new benefici-

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Terrible Tsarinas

aries of imperial largesse shared the spoils taken from those who

had lost. Commenting on this waltz, Mardefeld wrote to Freder-

ick II: “Count Loewenwolde’s clothing, underwear, hose and lin-

ens were distributed among the empress’s chamberlains, who

were naked as a hand. Of the four most recently named gentle-

men of the chamber, two had been lackeys and a third had served

as stableman.”3

As for the leading protagonists, Elizabeth rewarded them far

more than they could have hoped. Lestocq became a count, pri-

vate counselor to Her Majesty, premier doctor to the court, and

director of “the college of medicine” with a 7,000-ruble annual re-

tainer for life. Mikhail Vorontsov, Alexander Shuvalov and Alexis

Razumovsky awoke the next day (and a beautiful morning it was)

as grand chamberlains and knights of St. Andrew. At the same

time, the entire company of grenadiers of the Preobrazhensky

Regiment, which had contributed to the tsarina’s success on No-

vember 25, 1741, was converted into a company of personal body-

guards for Her Majesty under the Germanic name of the Leib-

Kompania. Every man and every officer of this elite unit was pro-

moted one level; their uniforms were adorned with an escutcheon

bearing the device “Fidelity and Zeal.” Some were even brought

into the nobility, with hereditary titles, together with gifts of

lands and up to 2,000 rubles. Alexis Razumovsky and Mikhail

Vorontsov, who had no military knowledge whatsoever, were

named Lieutenant Generals, with concomitant rewards of money

and domains.

Despite all this repeated generosity, the leaders of the coup

d’état were always asking for more. Far from appeasing them, the

tsarina’s prodigality turned their heads. They thought she “owed

them everything” because they had “given their all.” Their wor-

ship for the matushka devolved into familiarity, even impertinence.

Within Elizabeth’s entourage, the men of the Leib-Kompania were

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Elizabeth’s Triumph

called the “creative grenadiers,” since they had “created” the new

sovereign, or “Her Majesty’s big kids,” since she treated them with

an almost maternal indulgence. Aggravated by the insolence of

these low class parvenus, Mardefeld complained in a dispatch to

King Frederick II of Prussia, “They [the empress’s grenadiers] re-

fuse to get out of the court, they are well-entrenched, . . . they

walk in the galleries where Her Majesty holds her court, they min-

gle with people of the first quality, . . . they stuff their faces at the

same table where the empress sits, and she is so nice to them that

she has gone as far as to sign an order to print the image of a

grenadier on the back of the new rubles.”4

In a report dating from the same month and year Edward

Finch, the English ambassador, wrote that the bodyguards as-

signed to the palace had deserted their stations one fine day in

order to protest the disciplinary action inflicted upon one of them

by their superior officer, the Prince of Hesse-Homburg; Her Maj-

esty was indignant that anyone should have dared to punish her

“children” without asking her authorization and she embraced the

victims of such iniquity.

She always tried to give preference to Russians when mak-

ing appointments to sensitive positions, but she was often forced

to call upon foreigners to fulfill functions requiring a minimum of

competence, despite her good intentions. Thus, given the lack of

qualified personnel, one after another of Münnich’s former victims

reappeared in St. Petersburg to populate the ministries and chan-

celleries. Devier and Brevern, back in the saddle, brought in other

Germans including Siewers and Flück.

To justify these inevitable offenses to Slavic nationalism,

Elizabeth cited her model Peter the Great who, in his own words,

had wanted to “open a window on Europe.” France was, cer-

tainly, at the center of this ideal Europe, with its light take on life,

its fine culture and philosophical irony; but there was Germany,

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Terrible Tsarinas

too — such a thoughtful, disciplined, industrious nation, so rich

in military and commercial professionals, so well-endowed with

princes and princesses in need of marriage partners! Could Eliza-

beth fish, according to her needs, in both of these ponds? Should

she really refrain from employing experienced men, simply in or-

der to Russianize everything? Her dream would be to reconcile

the local customs with new ideas from abroad, to enrich the ways

of the Russophiles, so much in love with their past, by bringing in

contributions from the West, to create a German or French Rus-

sia without betraying the traditions of the fatherland.

While pondering which way to turn, under pressure from