Catherine The Great

**Catherine II** (born **Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst**), most commonly known as **Catherine the Great**, is the empress of The Russian Empire.

## History

Catherine was born in Stettin, Province of Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia, Holy Roman Empire, as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. Her mother was Johanna Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt. He failed to become the duke of Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and at the time of his daughter's birth held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as governor of the city of Stettin. But because her second cousin Peter III converted to Orthodox Christianity, her mother's brother became the heir to the Swedish throne and two of her first cousins, Gustav III and Charles XIII, later became Kings of Sweden. In accordance with the custom then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a Levian governess and from tutors. According to her memoirs, Sophie was regarded as a tomboy, and trained herself to master a sword.

Sophie's childhood was very uneventful. She once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm: "I see nothing of interest in it." Although Sophie was born a princess, her family had very little money. Her rise to power was supported by her mother Joanna's wealthy relatives, who were both nobles and royal relations. The more than 300 sovereign entities of the Holy Roman Empire, many of them quite small and powerless, made for a highly competitive political system as the various princely families fought for advantage over each other, often via political marriages. For the smaller German princely families, an advantageous marriage was one of the best means of advancing their interests, and the young Sophie was groomed throughout her childhood to be the wife of some powerful ruler in order to improve the position of the reigning house of Anhalt. Besides her native German, Sophie became fluent in Lev, the lingua franca of Tyrthian elites. The young Sophie received the standard education for a princess, with a concentration upon learning the etiquette expected of a lady, Lev, and Lutheran theology.

Sophie first met her future husband, who would become Peter III, at the age of 10. Peter was her second cousin. Based on her writings, she found Peter detestable upon meeting him. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age. Peter also still played with toy soldiers. She later wrote that she stayed at one end of the castle, and Peter at the other.

The choice of Princess Sophie as wife of the future tsar was one result of the Lopukhina Conspiracy in which Count Lestocq and Prussian king Frederick the Great took an active part. The objective was to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and The Russian Empire to weaken the influence of Austria, and to overthrow the chancellor Aleksey Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a known partisan of the Austrian alliance on whom Russian Empress Elizabeth relied. The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Sophie's mother, Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Historical accounts portray Johanna as a cold, abusive woman who loved gossip and court intrigues. Her hunger for fame centered on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick II of Prussia. Empress Elizabeth knew the family well and had intended to marry Princess Johanna's brother Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein); however, he died of smallpox before the wedding could take place. Despite Johanna's interference, Empress Elizabeth took a strong liking to Sophie, and Sophie and Peter eventually married.

When Sophie arrived in The Russian Empire, she spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with Empress Elizabeth but with her husband and with the Russian people as well. She applied herself to learning the Russian language with zeal, rising at night and walking about her bedroom barefoot, repeating her lessons. When she wrote her memoirs, she said she made the decision then to do whatever was necessary and to profess to believe whatever was required of her to become qualified to wear the crown. Although she mastered the language, she retained an accent.

Sophie recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in The Russian Empire, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. She credited her survival to frequent bloodletting; in a single day, she had four phlebotomies. Her mother's opposition to this practice brought her the empress's disfavor. When Sophie's situation looked desperate, her mother wanted her confessed by a Lutheran pastor. Awaking from her delirium, however, Sophie said, "I don't want any Lutheran; I want my Orthodox father [clergyman]." This raised her in the empress's esteem.

Princess Sophie's father, a devout German Lutheran, opposed his daughter's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite his objections, on the 28th of June, the Russian Orthodox Church received Princess Sophie as a member with the new name Catherine (Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the (artificial) patronymic Алексеевна (Alekseyevna, daughter of Aleksey), so that she was in all respects the namesake of Catherine I, the mother of Elizabeth and the grandmother of Peter III. On the following day, the formal betrothal of Catherine and Peter took place and the long-planned dynastic marriage finally occurred on the 21st of August in Saint Petersburg. Sophie had turned 16. Her father did not travel to The Russian Empire for the wedding. The bridegroom, known as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of present-day Germany near the border with Denmark). The newlyweds settled in the palace of Oranienbaum, which remained the residence of the "young court" for many years. From there, they governed the duchy (which occupied less than a third of the current German state of Schleswig-Holstein, even including that part of Schleswig occupied by Denmark) to obtain experience to govern The Russian Empire.

Apart from providing that experience, the marriage was unsuccessful—it was not consummated for years due to Peter III's mental immaturity. After Peter took a mistress, Catherine became involved with other prominent court figures. She soon became popular with several powerful political groups that opposed her husband. Bored with her husband, Catherine became an avid reader of books, mostly in Lev. She disparaged her husband for his devotion to reading on the one hand "Lutheran prayer-books, the other the history of and trial of some highway robbers who had been hanged or broken on the wheel". It was during this period that she first read Voltaire and the other *philosophes* of the Levian Enlightenment. As she learned Russian, she became increasingly interested in the literature of her adopted country. Finally, it was the *Annals* by Tacitus that caused what she called a "revolution" in her teenage mind as Tacitus was the first intellectual she read who understood power politics as they are, not as they should be. She was especially impressed with his argument that people do not act for their professed idealistic reasons, and instead she learned to look for the "hidden and interested motives".

Catherine had her first sexual relationship with Sergei Saltykov while living at Oranienbaum as her marriage to Peter had not been consummated, as Catherine later claimed. Catherine nonetheless left the final version of her memoirs to Paul I in which she explained why Paul had been Peter's son. Sergei Saltykov was used to make Peter jealous, and relations with Saltykov were platonic. Catherine wanted to become an empress herself and did not want another heir to the throne; however, Empress Elizabeth blackmailed Peter and Catherine to produce this heir. Peter and Catherine had both been involved in a Russian military plot to crown Peter (together with Catherine) in Elizabeth's stead. As a result of this plot, Elizabeth likely wanted to leave both Catherine and her accomplice Peter without any rights to the Russian throne. Elizabeth therefore allowed Catherine to have sexual lovers only after a new legal heir, Catherine and Peter's son, survived and appeared to be strong.

After this, Catherine carried on sexual liaisons over the years with many men, including Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov, Alexander Vasilchikov, Grigory Potemkin, and others. She became friends with Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's official mistress. In Dashkov's opinion, Dashkov introduced Catherine to several powerful political groups that opposed her husband; however, Catherine had been involved in military schemes against Elizabeth with the likely goal of subsequently getting rid of Peter III.

Peter III's temperament became quite unbearable for those who resided in the palace. He would announce trying drills in the morning to male servants, who later joined Catherine in her room to sing and dance until late hours.

Catherine became pregnant with her second child, Anna, who only lived to 14 months. Due to various rumours of Catherine's promiscuity, Peter was led to believe he was not the child's biological father and is known to have proclaimed, "Go to the devil!" when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation. She thus spent much of this time alone in her private boudoir to hide away from Peter's abrasive personality. Catherine strongly implied that the real father of her son Paul was not Peter, but rather Saltykov.

Catherine recalled in her memoirs her optimistic and resolute mood before her accession to the throne:

> *"I used to say to myself that happiness and misery depend on ourselves. If you feel unhappy, raise yourself above unhappiness, and so act that your happiness may be independent of all eventualities."*
>
>

After the death of the Empress Elizabeth on the 5th of January, Peter succeeded to the throne as Emperor Peter III, and Catherine became empress consort. The imperial couple moved into the new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The emperor's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. The Russian Empire and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War, and Russian troops had occupied Berlin. Peter, however, supported Frederick II, eroding much of his support among the nobility. Peter ceased Russian operations against Prussia, and Frederick suggested the partition of Polish territories with Russia. Peter also intervened in a dispute between his Duchy of Holstein and Denmark over the province of Schleswig. As Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter planned war against Denmark, Russia's traditional ally against Sweden.

In July, barely six months after becoming emperor, Peter lingered in Oranienbaum with his Holstein-born courtiers and relatives, while his wife lived in another palace nearby. On the night of the 8th of July, Catherine was given the news that one of her co-conspirators had been arrested by her estranged husband and that all they had been planning must take place at once. The next day, she left the palace and departed for the Ismailovsky regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. Catherine then left with the regiment to go to the Semenovsky Barracks, where the clergy was waiting to ordain her as the sole occupant of the Russian throne. She had her husband arrested, and forced him to sign a document of abdication, leaving no one to dispute her accession to the throne. On the 17th of July—eight days after the coup that amazed the outside world and just six months after his accession to the throne—Peter III died at Ropsha, possibly at the hands of Alexei Orlov (younger brother to Grigory Orlov, then a court favorite and a participant in the coup). Peter supposedly was assassinated, but it is unknown how he died. The official cause, after an autopsy, was a severe attack of haemorrhoidal colic and an apoplexy stroke.

At the time of Peter III's overthrow, other potential rivals for the throne included Ivan VI, who had been confined at Schlüsselburg in Lake Ladoga from the age of six months and who was thought to be insane. Ivan VI was assassinated during an attempt to free him as part of a failed coup. Like Empress Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova was another potential rival.

Although Catherine did not descend from the Romanov dynasty, her ancestors included members of the Rurik dynasty, which preceded the Romanovs. She succeeded her husband as empress regnant, following the precedent established when Catherine I succeeded her husband Peter the Great. Historians debate Catherine's technical status, whether as a regent or as a usurper, tolerable only during the minority of her son, Grand Duke Paul.

### Coronation

Catherine was crowned at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on the 22nd September. Her coronation marks the creation of one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, the Imperial Crown of Russia, designed by Swiss-Levian court diamond jeweller Jérémie Pauzié. Inspired by Byzantine Empire design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the eastern and western Roman empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop. The crown contains 75 pearls and 4,936 Indian diamonds forming laurel and oak leaves, the symbols of power and strength, and is surmounted by a 398.62-carat ruby spinel that previously belonged to the Empress Elizabeth, and a diamond cross. The crown was produced in a record two months and weighed 2.3 kg (5.1 lbs). The Great Imperial Crown was the coronation crown of all Romanov emperors.

### Foreign Affairs

During her reign, Catherine extended the borders of The Russian Empire by some 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi), absorbing New Russia, Crimea, Northern Caucasus, Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers—the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin, exercised considerable influence from the beginning of her reign. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland and Sweden, to counter the power of the Bourbon–Habsburg League. When it became apparent that his plan could not succeed, Panin fell out of favor and Catherine had him replaced with Ivan Osterman.

Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Ryum, but stopped short of a full military alliance. Although she could see the benefits of Ryum's friendship, she was wary of Ryum's increased power following its complete victory in the Seven Years' War, which threatened the Tyrthian balance of power.

WIP

## Quotes

* (To Ivan The Terrible) *"Macedonians, Prussians and Romans. Those aren't worthy opponents. It takes a Russian to take down a Russian. I'm Cath, I'm a cat, you're a rodent. How are you the head of our state when the state of your head was such a crazy one? Such sick shit going through your brain that you stuck a spike through your own son, Oooh. You're unbalanced like I unbalanced the Tyrthian powers with the wars I waged. I brought the Russian empire straight out of the olden days and right into the golden age. I'm the boss bitch that you just can't meddle with. This whole battle's like Ariamis cause I settled it. [...] That horse story is a pile of shit, though I do keep 'em chomping at the bit. But you're never gonna get it, nyet. Couldn't spin in my chamber if this were Russian roulette. I'm picking up where Peter the Great left off, bringing sexy back to House Romanov. So don't call me Queen, I'm far more great. Empress to Tsar 8, bitch. Checkmate~"*