Terrible Tsarinas

agreement was signed on August 8, 1743. Via the treaty of Abo,

Russia gave back some recently conquered territories but held

onto most of Finland. With the Swedish conflict settled, Eliza-

beth hoped that France would prove less hostile to the idea of an

accord. But, in the meantime, St. Petersburg had signed a pact of

friendship with Berlin, which Versailles took very badly. Once

again, every attempt would have to be made to assuage, reassure,

and persuade them of Russia’s good faith.

It was on the background of this unsettled international

context that an affair erupted that neither Bestuzhev nor Eliza-

beth had been prepared for in the least. In mid-summer, St. Pe-

tersburg was rocked by rumors of a plot being fomented among

the highest nobility, intended to overthrow Elizabeth I, at the in-

stigation of the Austrian ambassador Botta d’Adorno. This dis-

loyal and disruptive coterie was said to be considering offering the

throne to the Brunswick family, gathered around little Ivan VI. As

soon as Elizabeth got wind of this, she ordered the impudent

Botta d’Adorno arrested. But, having a good nose for danger, he

had already left Russia. He was said to be on his way to Berlin, on

the way to Austria.

This diplomatic felon may have escaped, but his Russian ac-

complices were still around. The most compromised were those

who were close (or distant) relations of the Lopukhin clan. Eliza-

beth didn’t forget that she had had to slap Natalya Lopukhin for

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An Autocrat at Work and Play

having the temerity to wear a rose in her hair. Moreover, her rival

had been the mistress of Loewenwolde, recently exiled to Siberia.

But there were other members of the conspiracy who were even

more despicable. At the top of the list Elizabeth put Mrs. Mikhail

Bestuzhev, née Golovkin, sister of a former vice-chancellor and

sister-in-law of the current chancellor Alexis Bestuzhev, and

widow, by her first marriage, of one of Peter the Great’s closest

associates, Yaguzhinsky.

While waiting for the Russian culprits to be arrested and

tried, she hoped that Austria would punish its ambassador se-

verely. But, while King Frederick II expelled Botta as soon as he

arrived in Berlin, the empress Maria Theresa, having welcomed

the diplomat in Vienna, merely scolded him. Disappointed by the

feeble reactions of two foreign sovereigns whom she had believed

were more solid in their monarchical convictions, Elizabeth took

revenge by locking up the princely couple of Brunswick and their

son, young Ivan VI, in the maritime fortress of Dunamunde, on the

Duna, where she could keep a closer eye on them than in Riga.

She also considered dismissing Alexis Bestuzhev, whose family

was so compromised. Then, no doubt under Razumovsky’s influ-

ence in favor of moderation, she allowed the chancellor to retain

his post.

However, she needed victims on whom to vent her fury, and

she chose to make Mrs. Lopukhin, her Ivan son and some of their

close relatives take the brunt of it. For Natalya Lopukhin, a slap

in the face was no longer punishment enough; this time, she was

in for horrible torture — and her accomplices as well. Under the

knout, the clippers and the branding iron, Lopukhin, her son Ivan,

and Mrs. Bestuzhev, writhing in pain, repeated the calumnies that

they had heard from the mouth of Botta. In spite of the lack of

material evidence, a hastily convened emergency court (made up

of several members of the Senate and three representatives of the

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Terrible Tsarinas

clergy) sentenced all the “culprits” to the wheel, quartering, and

decapitation. This exemplary sentence offered Elizabeth the op-

portunity to decide, during a ball, that she would spare life of the

miserable wretches who had dared to conspire against her, and

would limit their punishment to public “lesson.” When this ex-

traordinary measure of leniency was announced, everyone present

cheered Her Majesty’s angelic kindness.

On August 31, 1743, a scaffold was erected in front of the pal-

ace of Colleges. Standing before an enormous crowd of curious

onlookers, Mrs. Mikhail Bestuzhev was brutally stripped by the

torturer. As she had managed to find the time to slip him a jewel-

studded cross just before he began, he barely stroked her back

with the whip and slid his knife over her tongue without scratch-

ing the flesh. She suffered these apparent blows and wounds with

heroic dignity. Less sure of her nerves, Mrs. Lopukhin struggled

desperately when the torturer’s assistant ripped off her clothes.

The multitude was stunned to silence by the suddenly revealed

nudity of this woman who was even more appealing in her dis-

tress. Then some of witnesses, impatient to see the rest, began to

howl. Panicking at this outburst of raw hatred, the poor woman

struggled, insulted the torturer and bit his hand. Furious, he

grabbed her by the throat, forced open her jaws, held up the sacri-

ficial weapon and presented the laughing crowd with a bloody

scrap of meat. “Who’ll take the tongue of the beautiful Mrs.