Terrible Tsarinas

heart remained cold?

La Chétardie was at last recalled by his government, and he

was preparing for his final audience before leaving the palace

when Elizabeth called him in and spontaneously suggested that

he accompany her on the pilgrimage she wished to make to the

[Holy Trinity] Troitsky-St. Sergievsky Monastery, just north of

Moscow.* Flattered by this return to grace, the ambassador trav-

eled with her to this high holy place. Lodged very comfortably

with the tsarina’s retinue, he did not leave her side for eight days.

To be frank, Elizabeth was delighted by this discreet

“companionship.” She took La Chétardie with her to visit the

churches as well as in the drawing rooms. The courtiers were al-

ready whispering that the “Gaulois” was about to replace Maurice

of Saxony in Her Majesty’s favor.

But, as soon as the little imperial band returned to St. Peters-

burg, La Chétardie had to admit that once more he had begun to

rejoice too soon. Getting a hold on herself after a brief and very

feminine lapse, Elizabeth once again took a very cool, even distant,

tone with La Chétardie, as in their earlier conversations. Time

* Ed. note: This was one of the earliest and most influential religious centers

in Russia and, indeed, helped to concentrate power in Moscow during the

Middle Ages .

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Elizabeth’s Triumph

and again, she made appointments with him and then broke them,

and one day when he complained to her about Bestuzhev, whose

ostracism of France was close to an obsession (according to the

Fernchman), she set him in his place with a few sharp words. “We

do not condemn people before proving their crimes!”6 However,

the day before La Chétardie’s departure, she sent him a snuffbox

studded with diamonds, with her portrait in miniature in the

middle.

The day after this necessary separation from a character who

charmed and irritated her by turns, Elizabeth was as sad as if she

had lost a dear friend. While La Chétardie was stopped at a

stagehouse along the way, an emissary from Elizabeth caught up

with him. The man handed him a note in a sealed envelope, bear-

ing only the words: “France will be in my heart forever.”7 That

sounds like the wail of a lover who has been forsaken — but by

whom? By an ambassador? By a king? By France itself? Her feel-

ings must have been quite confused, by now. While her subjects

may have been entitled to dream, that innocent diversion was off

limits for her. Abandoned by someone whom she had always

claimed was of no importance, it was time to come back to reality

and to focus on the succession to the throne, rather than thinking

about her life as a woman.

On November 7, 1742, she published a proclamation sol-

emnly dubbing Duke Charles Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp

Grand Duke, crown prince and Imperial Highness, under the Rus-

sian name of Peter Fyodorovich. She took this occasion to con-

firm her intention not to marry. In fact, she was afraid that if she

married a man of lower rank, or a foreign prince, she would be let-

ting down not only the brave men of the Leib-Kompania but all the

Russians who were so attached to the memory of her father, Peter

the Great. Better to remain unwed, she thought. To be worthy of

the role that she intended to play, she would have to forego any

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Terrible Tsarinas

union officially sanctioned by the Church and remain faithful to

her image as the maiden-tsar, “the imperial Virgin,” already cele-

brated by Russian legend.

On the other hand, she was beginning to see that the youth

whom she had selected to be her heir, whom she had had baptized

into the Orthodox faith under the name of Peter Fyodorovich and

who had so very little Russian blood in his veins, was never going

to forget his true fatherland. In fact, despite the efforts of his

mentor, Simon Todorsky, Grand Duke Peter always returned in-

stinctively to his origins. Besides, it was hard not to continue

worshiping his native Germany when everything about the soci-

ety, the streets and the shops of St. Petersburg reflected its influ-

ence so strongly. It was clear that the majority of influential peo-

ple in the palace and in the ministries spoke German more flu-

ently than Russian, and along the very luxurious Nevsky Prospect,

many of the stores were German; elsewhere, signs of the Han-

seatic League were in evidence, and there were plenty of Lutheran

churches. When Peter Fyodorovich showed up at a barracks

guardroom, during a walk about town, the officer he addressed

would often answer him in German. And with every reminder of

his homeland, Peter regretted being exiled in this city that, de-

spite its splendors, meant less to him than the most trivial village

of Schleswig-Holstein.

Forced to acclimatize himself, he took an aversion to the

Russian vocabulary, Russian grammar, and Russian ways. He re-

sented Russia for not being German, and he took to saying, “I was

not born for the Russians, and I do not like them!” Living at the

center of this great land of foreigners, he chose his friends from