In the group of dignitaries was a German military engineer, Münnich, who had never yet gambled in the intrigue of making a ruler of the Russian Empire, and chance and spite now offered him an opportunity. On November 19th, a few weeks after the death of the late Empress, he had some business at the chamber of the Princess Anne, and the young mother tearfully confided to him her humiliations. She and her husband, she sobbed, would take their child and quit Russia for ever. Münnich was sympathetic: as she may have been forewarned. Biren had not given him the post of Commander in Chief, which he coveted. He told Anne to confide entirely in him, and went off to dine, jovially enough, with Biren. He was back afterwards at Anne’s chamber, telling her to be ready for action at three the next morning; and, in order the better to mask his intrigue, he returned to sup and crack a bottle with the Regent.
Münnich was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guard, and at two in the morning he told his plan to the awakened officers, and they led a picked body of troops to the Summer Palace. Bluffing the guards with a statement that he was conducting the Princess Anne to see Biren on some important business, he took his men to the room in which Biren and his wife slept. One glance at the massed uniforms behind the Colonel told the amazing adventurer that his hour had come. He fought like a madman, but was overpowered and carried off in a quilt. Before the day broke his brothers and reliable supporters were under arrest, and St. Petersburg awoke to find that another revolution had been successfully accomplished at the palace. The hated Courlander was stripped of all his possessions, and he took that dreary route to Siberia that had been trodden by thousands of his victims.
But this last romance—of this particular series—had only begun with the pretty adventure of the German engineer. Münnich inherited Biren’s vanity and corruption, as well as his power and wealth, but not his astuteness. In two months he is said to have heaped up a fortune hardly less than that of Biren, and it was at the grave cost of the State. The War of the Austrian Succession had opened, and Frederick of Prussia heavily bribed Münnich to put Russia on his side instead of that of Maria Theresa. This was too much for the sagacious Ostermann, who secured a redistribution of power and responsibility. His conceited fellow-countryman, overestimating the stupidity of the Regents, tendered his resignation, and it was accepted. Ostermann now resumed the control of foreign policy, but such matters concern us little here. It is enough to say that Sweden was spurred by France to a new attack upon Russia, and was defeated.
In the meantime the new romance was rapidly developing in the court. A young German woman named Julia Mengden secured, not merely the favours, but the passionate attachment, of the Regent Anne, and the court was filled afresh with disgust. Anne, an idle and insipid creature, would spend almost the whole day playing cards with Julia. She was often too lazy or too listless to dress, and courtiers found her scantily draped in Julia’s room at all hours. Other Mengdens were attracted from the depths of Germany. A new brood of thick-tongued foreigners swarmed about the court.
Then Count Lynar, the Saxon envoy whom the late Empress had thought it prudent to remove, returned to St. Petersburg, and to the palace. Julia married him, but there seems no room for doubt that she was chiefly concerned to mask her royal friend’s liaison with the Count. Anne had a second legitimate child, but within a few weeks Julia was holding her door while Lynar was within. As Anne had no redeeming charm or grace of character, the court looked on with disdain. Lynar, it was feared, would succeed to the place of Münnich, Biren, and Menshikoff, and few had a word for Anne. To her court she presented always a dull and bored look, and her husband she openly despised.
In the circumstances a fresh intrigue was almost inevitable, and the only other surviving Romanoff was the Princess Elizabeth. There was, moreover, a French envoy at St. Petersburg who had the romantic imagination in its liveliest form, and who concluded that Elizabeth was precisely the ruler who would best suit the interests of his country. To obtain power she would, he thought, desert St. Petersburg for Moscow and surrender the Baltic provinces to the Swedes. He got into touch with Elizabeth and proposed that she should do this, if he arranged, simultaneously, a rising in St. Petersburg and an invasion by the Swedes. Elizabeth refused to yield territory, but she continued the negotiations. In December Anne detected her correspondence and warmly scolded her, but the quarrel ended in embraces. That was on December 4th; and in the early morning of December 6th, as Anne slept with her beloved Julia, a troop of grenadiers, with Princess Elizabeth at their head, entered the room and made an end of the reign of little Ivan VI and the Regency of his parents. How that was done belongs to the romance of the romantic Empress Elizabeth.
CHAPTER X
THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH
Elizabeth has already entered so frequently, and so picturesquely, into the story that little further introduction is necessary. She was the younger of the two surviving daughters of Peter the Great and Catherine, and she inherited the independent temper of her father. Her pretty, merry figure was one of the most piquant of the court, and she had hardly attained a precocious puberty when it became necessary to watch her movements. She had, during the last three reigns, regarded both the court and its rulers with disdain. For the belated prudery of the Empress Anne she had no respect; it was the awful threat of confining her hot blood in a convent which had for a time curbed her public behaviour. For the baby-Emperor and his foolish parents she felt contempt, and she was prepared at any time to see the wheel of fortune turn toward her.
It was, as I said, the enterprising Marquis de la Chétardie who opened for her a plausible path to the throne. I would not stress her virtue in refusing to promise to yield Russian territory to Sweden. She knew, and the Marquis ought to have known, that such a concession would have cost her the throne. But she continued to negotiate with him, and her French physician, Lestocq, assisted in the plot. Count Ostermann, the wise old German councillor who survived all revolutions at court, suspected her, and she had to use strategy. Chétardie took a villa up the Neva, and Elizabeth was fond of boating. She contrived to meet him casually and discuss the plot. She had, further, a few confidants at court, who were ready to speculate on the chances of a revolution, and she had, especially, the affection of the guards. Like her mother she was amiable with the soldiers. She held their children at the font and inquired genially about their families. Ostermann, we saw, detected the conspiracy, and Anne was directed to charge her with treasonable relations with France and Sweden, the enemies of Russia. The interview ended in sisterly tears and embraces, and the conspirators got speedily to work.
Ostermann, seeing the weakness of Anne, ordered the guard to be ready to leave for the frontier within twenty-four hours. It was probable, he mendaciously said, that Sweden was about to re-open the war. He had recently quarrelled with Elizabeth, and had no mind to see her Empress. This was on December 5th, the day after her interview with Anne. That night at ten the conspirators met to decide upon immediate action. Lestocq, the doctor, went out into the snow to see that all lights were out at Ostermann’s mansion and the palace. They were as feeble a group of conspirators as ever engineered a revolution in Russia, and Elizabeth wavered between dread of a convent and eagerness for the throne. The most active and eloquent of them was the French physician. Then there were Vorontsoff, her chamberlain; Schwartz, her music-master; the brothers Shuvaloff, gentlemen of her household; and Alexis Razumovsky, her lover at the time, of whom we will see more. They raised Elizabeth’s courage to the required pitch, and Lestocq stealthily introduced twenty grenadiers of the guard who professed that they were—for a consideration—ready to die for her. Elizabeth donned a cuirass under her cloak and slung a crucifix at her breast, and then, after a long and fervent prayer, committed her fortunes to Providence and the modest skill of her friends. Her lover was left to guard the house.