CATHERINE II.
After the death of Peter I., the sceptre of Russia passed into hands incompetent to carry on the great scheme of national aggrandizement and civilization which he had originated. Nearly forty years elapsed before there appeared a worthy successor to that remarkable prince: and at last it was a German woman, who, under the title ofCatherine II., established Russia in that lofty position which she now occupies among the powers of Europe.
This masculine-minded woman was the daughter of Christian Frederic, prince of Anhalt Zerbst Dornberg, and major-general in the Prussian service. She was born at Stettin, May 2, 1729, and was named at her baptism Sophia Augusta Frederica. In her sixteenth year she was selected by the Empress Elizabeth to become the wife of the Grand-Duke, afterwards Peter III.; and their marriage was solemnized, September 1, 1745, after the bride had made public profession of the faith of the Greek church, and received the name of Catherina Alexiewna. On the events of her life during the next sixteen years, until the death of Elizabeth, it is not necessary to dwell: she then exercised no influence in affairs of state. The example of a most corrupt court, and a sovereign sunk in the grossest sensuality, exerted their natural effect upon her youthful mind: and if she brought principles of morality and chastity from Germany, they were soon extinguished by the evil influence of all around her, and the disgust inspired by an ignorant and besotted husband; during whose life, as well as after her own accession to the throne, she bestowed her favour on a succession of paramours. Her behaviour was less revolting, but her rule of life was hardly more strict than that of the Empress Elizabeth.
The history of Russia gave encouragement to an able, ambitious spirit, like that of Catherine, to shape for itself a more brilliant prospect than that which lay before her as the wife of a despotic prince, whom she hated, and had reason to fear. Even before the death of Elizabeth, which took place January 2, 1762, N. S., she had intrigued to supplant her husband on the throne; and he had hardly occupied it six months, before she organized the revolution which conducted him to a prison and a grave. The only extenuation of her conduct in this crisis, is the probability, we might almost say certainty, that a similar fate would otherwise have befallen herself. Early on the morning of the 9th of July, Catherine quitted the palace of Peterhoff, on the Neva, to invoke the affection of the regiments of guards at St. Petersburg, who, like the Prætorian troops of Rome, had often bestowed the crown at their free pleasure. Her ready attention to Russian habits and prejudices, her assumed devotion to the Greek church, and the arts of her accomplices, had disposed, not only the soldiers, but a large portion of the citizens, to declare in her favour: and when she applied for protection, and told them “that her danger had driven her to the necessity of coming to ask their assistance, that the Czar had intended to put her to death that very night, together with her son; that she had no other means than by flight of escaping death, and that she had so much confidence in their dispositions as to put herself entirely in their hands,” the assembled crowd was not slow to hail her as their prince, and before the end of the day she had been crowned and proclaimed sovereign of all the Russias, by the title of Catherine II., had been acknowledged by crowds of citizens, and saw herself at the head of 15,000 picked soldiers. The Czar, confused and affrighted, consulted neither his safety nor his honour. On the following day, after some futile demonstrations of resistance, he surrendered his person unconditionally; and on the 17th he perished by a violent death, with the concurrence, no doubt, if not by the command of Catherine.
Nevertheless her situation for some time was critical. The common people reverenced the blood of Peter the Great, and lamented, with anger, the cruel fate which had befallen his grandson. The priests, whose favour Catherine had courted while Grand-Duchess, were disappointed and indignant to find her resolved to cast them off, when they had served her turn, and to limit as much as possible their influence, which had often been troublesome to her predecessors. The courtiers, many of them, were indignant at the sudden elevation of the daring adventurers who had won Catherine her throne. Buther promptitude and sagacity overcame these troubles and difficulties; and without any very alarming commotions, she gradually acquired that prescriptive right to the throne, which does so much for princes of doubtful title.
The power thus acquired by fraud and murder, Catherine used, on the whole, to the benefit of her subjects, with liberal intentions and with a judicious and enlightened policy. Abroad her views were directed to conquest, with the usual disregard of the common rules of honour and justice, as they are recognised between man and man. This fault she shares with the majority of princes: but the dismemberment of Poland pollutes her memory with one of the foulest stains recorded in history. Without proceeding seriatim through the multifarious events of her long reign, we shall attempt a short sketch of the leading features of her domestic policy and meditated improvements; and conclude with an equally concise outline of its foreign relations.
Her earliest cares and her zealous attention were directed to the fostering of commerce, and the encouragement of national industry in all its important branches: and it ought not to detract from her credit, that some of her measures, in accordance with the system of the age, were not such as modern economical science approves. But we may mention with unmixed praise, as indicative of a far-sighted and disinterested policy, the abolition of numerous monopolies, as well belonging to the crown, as granted to trading companies and private persons. Among these were the caravan-trade between Russia and China, several branches of fisheries, the manufacture of chintzes, the preparation of sugar, the tobacco-trade, and other things which were freely thrown open to individual competition. In promoting agriculture she was no less zealous. She established an experimental school of farming at her country-palace of Tzarsko-Tzelo, at which the most improved system of English agriculture was introduced, and gratuitous instruction was given to persons from all parts of the empire. One of her schemes was the establishment of numerous colonies over the uncultivated steppes of her vast empire: and thousands of families were allured from Poland, Germany, and even France, by the advantages which she held out, not merely to agricultural settlers, but to artificers, merchants, and all who were willing to aid in developing by their industry the unknown resources of the Russian empire. She sought to amend the administration of justice, and, to her high honour, put an end to the use of torture for extracting the truth in criminal proceedings. She abolished an odious tribunal, established byPeter I., called the Secret Inquisition Chancery, a kind of Star-Chamber, which gave facility to the most frivolous and malicious investigations, and had recourse to the most intolerable severities in conducting its inquiries. Aspiring to the glory of reforming the government, and giving a new code of laws to the empire, she summoned, in 1767, deputies to Moscow from every part and nation of her dominions, for whose consideration she had previously drawn up a body of instructions, of which the original manuscript, written in her own hand, is preserved in the library of the Academy of Petersburg. The work was greatly needed; for not merely were the general laws of the empire voluminous, insufficient, perplexed, and contradictory, but the particular laws of different provinces were confused and conflicting, and the difficulties arising out of this state of things were increased in a tenfold degree by the venality of the judges. But Catherine wanted perseverance and vigour to work out her scheme through the vexations of conflicting interests and tedious details. The history of this meeting of legislators illustrates the fate of most of her mighty undertakings. In their early sittings anger rose so high on the question of emancipating the serfs, that Catherine dismissed them, never to be recalled. She had acquired the glory of propounding a new code, not of laws, but of instructions for legislators; and the restless activity of her mind was satisfied, and passed to spend itself in some other channel. The instructions abound in philanthropic and wise suggestions; and satisfactorily show that it is much easier to talk than to perform. They are printed under the title “Instructions de Catherine II., pour la Commission chargée de dresser le projet d’un nouveau code des Loix.”
Of learning and of learned men Catherine was a liberal patroness. The love of glory was her ruling passion, and those whose praise was fame were sure of her favourable regard. The French writers were the chief objects of her attention and bounty. She corresponded with Voltaire, whom she earnestly invited to Petersburg: but, as we learn from his correspondence with the Empress, he feared in old age the rigour of a northern climate; perhaps too he recollected how Frederic of Prussia had sunk the philosopher in the king, and felt reluctant to trust himself again within the reach of despotic power: at all events he declined the intended honour. Diderot, at her request, visited Petersburg, and spent several months there; contriving, if Frederic’s account be true, to weary the imperial patience by his turn for argument and repetition. Her benefactions to him had been delicate and splendid. Being informed that poverty compelled him to dispose ofhis library, she purchased it for 15,000 livres, and at the same time left it in his care, and for his use and enjoyment, granting to him an annual salary, under the title of her librarian. With similar liberality she purchased and entrusted to the care of Professor Pallas his own valuable collections of natural history. She sought to attract D’Alembert to Petersburg, and invited him to superintend the education of her son, the Grand-Duke Paul: but he declined her offers. She patronized all institutions for the promotion of science and literature; and the Academy of Sciences at Petersburg owes to her generous support the greater part of its foreign associates, and its high reputation. The discoveries of Billings and others in the Northern and Eastern seas, and the expedition of Pallas and his associates to explore and describe the less known portions of the empire, are also to be mentioned among the scientific honours of her reign. In the patronage of art she was splendid; she loved magnificence, was regardless of expense, and spared no cost to assemble round her throne the greatest rarities of nature, and the most admirable or wonderful productions of man. And the architectural magnificence of St. Petersburg still bears witness to the elevation and splendour of her taste, and the extent of her revenues.
By much the greater part of what has been said, may appear to vindicate Catherine’s title to be called a good, as well as a great sovereign. Such, no doubt, had her moral faculties been better educated, she might have been: but her reign was vitiated, and her talents rendered comparatively useless to her subjects, by one prevailing fault of selfishness. Her temper was averse from wanton cruelty; she loved to see prosperity around her; she loved, still more, the glory of being reputed the author of that prosperity. But she loved to see others happy, not for their sakes, but for her own; we seek in vain in the records of her life for that laborious and self-denying spirit, which is ready to sacrifice its own will for the good of others. Hence the multiplicity of her plans, and the inconstancy of her purposes: she persevered in no task which had lost the excitement of novelty, or no longer nourished the craving appetite for praise. She was too eager to build, to allow the requisite time for laying foundations: and the consequence was seen, even before her death, in the ruined and neglected state of establishments on which she had prided herself, and which men who were no flatterers had regarded as the marks of a new era of civilization in Russia. A French writer, in the Biographie Universelle, says, “Legislation, colonies, education, institutions, canals, towns, fortresses, every thing had been begun, and abandonedbefore completion.” This passion of Catherine, for sketching every thing and finishing nothing, is well characterised by a saying of Joseph II. In her journey to the Crimea, she invited him to lay the second stone of Ekaterinoslaf, of which she herself had just laid the first. Joseph said, after his return, “The Empress of Russia and I completed a great undertaking in one day: she laid the first stone of a city, and I the last.”
Of the more than imperial splendour—the profuse extravagance—of her court and social life, space will not allow us to speak: a number of curious and amusing anecdotes on this subject, and other details relative to her person, manners, and habits, are to be found in Coxe’s Travels in Russia, and Tooke’s Life of the Empress Catherine II. The licentiousness of her conduct we should alike pass over, but for its connexion with affairs of state: for she paraded her prostitution before the eyes of all, apparently considering herself released by supreme rank and irresponsible power, from the control of those decencies which fetter even the vicious. A lover was part of Catherine’s state furniture, and a most expensive one: since the sums lavished on her series of favourites during her reign of thirty-four years, without including the enormous annual expense of their establishment, amounted, according to Mr. Tooke, (vol. iii. p. 374,) to more than eighty millions of roubles. This, at the lowest rate of two shillings a rouble, (Mr. Tooke states it to have been then worth four,) would be more than eight millions of pounds sterling. Nor was this the only evil: though Catherine suffered none of her favourites, except Potemkin, to interfere in the chief affairs of the state, their influence at a distance and in subordinate departments was immense; and whoever enjoyed their protection was sure of advancement beyond his merits, and enabled to tyrannize over others, and trample on law with impunity. Chosen for the most part from officers of the Guard, without a particle of sentiment, solely for personal attractions, we look in vain among them for one raised above the common level by talent or accomplishment, except the celebrated Potemkin, and perhaps the coarse and brutal Orloff, her husband’s murderer, and one of the chief instruments in placing herself upon the throne. Potemkin did possess a certain barbarous grandeur of ideas, fitted to strike an answering chord in Catherine’s ambitious and ostentatious mind; together with an aptitude for affairs, and a nature born to command, had it been improved by education and self-restraint, or chastened by adversity: and he alone, after he ceased to be a lover, preserved an all-ruling influence as a friend and confidant.
In speaking of Catherine’s foreign policy we must confine ourselves chiefly to two heads,—the humiliation of Turkey, and the spoliation of Poland. Very soon after her accession, a vacancy in the throne of Poland gave her the opportunity of imposing upon that unhappy nation as its new king one of her former lovers, Stanislaus Poniatowsky, whom she knew, from the weakness of his character, to be a fit instrument of maintaining and increasing her influence. Fear of the aggrandizement of so powerful and hostile a neighbour, and, more especially, jealousy of her designs upon Poland, induced the Porte to declare war against her in 1768. For eight years the contest continued, in all respects to the advantage of the Russians; and during the course of it a Russian fleet (conducted, however, in great measure by British officers) appeared for the first time in the Mediterranean, and signalized its prowess by the total destruction of a superior Turkish armament in the bay of Tchesme, in Lemnos. Not less successful were the Russian arms in the Black Sea, and in Moldavia and Wallachia. Still peace was desirable, even to the victor, from the exhaustion of the contest, and it was concluded in 1774, by the treaty of Kainardgi, upon terms very advantageous to Russia, yet perhaps more favourable than Turkey had cause to expect. The reason of this moderation we shall see presently. The free navigation of the Mediterranean seas and the passage of the Dardanelles were secured to Russia, and the district between the rivers Dnieper and Bog was ceded to her. The Tartars of the Crimea were declared independent, which was nearly equivalent to rendering them tributary to Russia: and in fact that country was formally ceded to Catherine in 1783, by the reigning Cham, and the Porte, unwillingly enough, yielded to that arrangement. But the insulting pomp of Catherine, which almost dared in a moment of bravado to threaten Constantinople itself with an invasion, led to a second war in 1786, which, after a bloody and exhausting conflict, terminated in 1791–2, by the treaty of Jassy, by the farther cession, on the part of Turkey, of the provinces between the Bog and the Dniester, which was declared to be thenceforward the frontier of the two empires. The Russian conquests in Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Wallachia were restored. Memorable in this war, for the desperation of their defence by the Turks, and the awful cruelties which attended their capture by the Russians, were the sieges of the strong fortresses of Oczakow at the mouth of the Dnieper, and Ismail on the Danube. On this occasion again, but for the intervention of other European powers, especially England and Prussia, Catherine might probablyhave obtained more favourable terms. But the importance of the acquisitions thus made by her on the Black Sea, from the Straits of Kertsh to the Dniester, is not to be measured by their wealth, scarcely by their extent. It was the command of the commerce of the Black Sea, and the opening a passage to Constantinople, which she had so much desired, and the Porte so much feared, that formed her chief triumph; and in the height of her ambition she dared to project the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, and the re-establishment of a Christian empire in Constantinople.
Not less important were her acquisitions on the western frontier. The atrocious project of partitioning Poland between her three most powerful neighbours, is said by Koch (Tableau des Révolutions) to have originated in the Turkish wars which we have just described. The occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by the Russians was calculated to alarm the jealousy of Austria; and Koch states, that Frederic II. suggested to the Empress that if she resigned them, as was done by the treaty of Kainardgi, she might take her equivalent from Poland, to a part of which Austria had already laid claim. Other writers have maintained that the scheme originated with Catherine. Be this as it may, the two monarchs readily came to an agreement, at the end of July, 1772: and as the Poles were in no condition to resist, and the powers which had guaranteed the independence of Poland looked on in silence, no opposition beyond remonstrance was made. In 1773, the Diet made a formal act of cession at Warsaw. In this first division, about 6500 square leagues of land, and five millions of human beings were thus robbed of their nationality: and the larger share, containing more than 4000 square leagues and three millions of people, situated in Livonia and Lithuania, was transferred to Russia, and formed into the governments of Polotsk and Mohilow. At the same time the three powers formally renounced all farther claims on Poland, and guaranteed to it its constitution and existence. But treaties are seldom able to bind ambition. A coldness succeeded between Russia and Prussia; and the latter, whose conduct ought to be marked with especial infamy, excited the Polish Diet, under promises of support, to make alterations in the constitution calculated to diminish the influence and rouse the jealousy of Russia. Catherine marched an army into the country in 1792, to support her party; the Poles flew to arms; and the King of Prussia, instead of sending the assistance which he had pledged himself to give, openly joined the Empress. A second partition of the spoil ensued in 1793, in which another portion of Lithuania was assigned to Russia; and another treaty ofalliance, or rather of subjection, was made. But the nation was roused by despair; and in the following spring that general insurrection broke out, which has given undying fame to the name of Kosciusko. There is a short account of this struggle in the memoir of that hero in our first volume; it terminated in the total subjection and final partition of Poland: in which Russia obtained the remainder of Lithuania, with Semigallia, Courland, &c., to the amount of about 2000 square leagues more. This took place in 1795.
We must refer to the various historical works on these times for an account of Catherine’s complicated negotiations with foreign courts, the blow which she aimed at the British dominion of the sea by the establishment, in 1780, of the celebrated Armed Neutrality, the war which she commenced against Persia at the end of her reign, and other events inferior in importance to those of which we have here given an imperfect outline. It is asserted that, having turned her arms towards the east, she had ventured to conceive the design of overturning the British empire in India. But her ambition and her life were simultaneously cut short by an attack of apoplexy, which carried her off very suddenly, November 9, 1796. She was succeeded by her grandson Paul I.
Catherine, in imitation of Frederic II., aspired to fame as an author. Besides the Instructions, she wrote moral tales and allegories, for the education of her grandchildren, and a number of dramatic pieces and proverbs acted at the Hermitage, and published under the title of Theatre of the Hermitage. Her correspondence with Voltaire and others is published.
[The Pavilion at Tzarsko-Tzelo. From a Print in the King’s Library.]
[The Pavilion at Tzarsko-Tzelo. From a Print in the King’s Library.]
[The Pavilion at Tzarsko-Tzelo. From a Print in the King’s Library.]