Terrible Tsarinas

almost think that Louis XV and his advisers, who had so ardently

sought her assistance against Prussia and England, now feared

that she would take too large a role in the European game, should

victory be theirs.

To back up the Marquis de l’Hôpital, who was getting a bit

old and tired, Versailles appointed the young baron of Breteuil. He

arrived in St. Petersburg, all full of life. He was charged by the

duke of Choiseul with convincing the Empress to delay further

military operations in order not to “increase the embarrassments

of the king of Prussia,” since that could compromise the signing of

a peace accord. At least, that is what the French envoy in Eliza-

beth’s entourage was told. She was shocked by this call for mod-

eration at the very hour when the spoils were to be divided. In

front of Ambassador Esterhazy who, in the name of the Austro-

Russian alliance, accused General Peter Saltykov of foot-dragging

and thus helping England (whom he hinted might be paying for

this indirect assistance), she flushed red with indignation and ex-

claimed: “We have never made a promise that we did not en-

deavor to hold ourselves to! . . . I will never allow that glory,

bought at the price of the precious blood of our subjects, to be

sullied by suspicions of insincerity!” And, in fact, at the end of the

third year of a senseless war, she could say that Russia was the

only power in the coalition that seemed ready to make every sacri-

fice to obtain the capitulation of Prussia.

< 224 >

Another Catherine!

Alexis Razumovsky supported her in her intransigence. He

too had never ceased believing in the military and moral suprem-

acy of the fatherland. However, when it came time to make the

decisions to commit her troops in merciless combat, she consulted

not her old lover, Alexis Razumovsky, not her current favorite,

Ivan Shuvalov (so cultivated and so learned), nor her too-cautious

and too-clever chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, but the awesome

memory of her grandfather, Peter the Great. It was he whom she

had in mind on January 1, 1760, while everyone was making New

Year’s resolutions, when she publicly wished that her army would

prove to be “more aggressive and more daring” in order to oblige

Frederick II to submit. As a reward for this supreme effort, she

stated that she would ask for nothing more than to take posses-

sion of Eastern Prussia, subject to a territorial exchange with Po-

land (which could, if need be, retain a semblance of autonomy).

That last clause should be enough, she judged, to alleviate Louis

XV’s concerns.

To prepare for such delicate negotiations, the king of France

rested his hopes on the assistance that the baron of Breteuil could

lend to the aging marquis de l’Hôpital. In fact, it was not the

baron’s diplomatic experience that he counted on in circumvent-

ing the tsarina, but the seductive influence that the 27-year-old

dandy seemed to have over women. Elizabeth knew the game too

well not to see through Breteuil’s false admiration of her glory;

moreover, in analyzing his ploy, she understood that it was not

she but the grand duchess whom he sought to allure into cooper-

ating in furthering the interests of France. In order to win favor

with Catherine, he offered her a choice — to allow him to make

love to her as only a Frenchman knows how to do, or to persuade

the tsarina to bring back Stanislaw Poniatowski, moldering as he

was in his dull Poland. Whether she accepted either one of these

offers or combined them both for her pleasure, she surely would

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Terrible Tsarinas

be so grateful towards France that she would not be able to refuse

him anything.

The time was right for such a charm offensive — especially

given that the young woman had just suffered two serious heart-

aches: the death of her daughter, young Anna,5 and that of her

mother, who had recently passed away in Paris. However, in spite

of this twofold mourning, it happened that Catherine had finally

overcome the depression that had held her back all these years

and, better yet, she felt no need to take up again with her former

lovers nor to entertain another one, even if he were French.

The truth is that she had not waited for the baron of Breteuil

to come up with a successor to the men who used to brighten her

days. Her newly-anointed had the unique qualities of being of

purely Russian blood and a superb, well-built man, athletic,

brash, and deep in debt, renowned for his escapades and ready to

undertake any folly to protect his mistress. This was Grigory Or-

lov. He and his four brothers all served in the imperial guard. His

dedication to the traditions of his regiment reinforced his hatred

of the Grand Duke Peter, who was well known for his contempt

of the Russian army and its leaders. The very idea of this histri-

onic poltroon swaggering about in a Holstein uniform, a self-

proclaimed follower of Frederick II despite being heir to the

throne of Russia, left Orlov feeling morally obliged to defend the

grand duchess against her husband’s irrational maneuvers.