Austria accepted the scheme, and Russian agents were sent to agitate in the Slav provinces of Turkey. In 1787 Catherine herself made an imposing journey in the south. Turkey clearly saw the threat to its Empire, and in 1787 it declared war. Potiamkin, Catherine’s favourite at the time, was entrusted with the supreme command, and marched south. Then the ever-ready Swede fell upon the flank of Russia, and Catherine, who could from St. Petersburg hear the roar of the Swedish guns on the Baltic, had a momentary fright. She called up all her energy and stirred her commanders, and in the following year she had peace with Sweden and was free to attack Turkey, in conjunction with the Austrians. The details do not concern us. The war lasted five years, and a little more of the coast of the Black Sea was brought within the Russian Empire. It may be added, briefly, that continued internal trouble in Poland, of which Catherine took as mean an advantage as any, led to the second and third partitions of that country. Poland ceased to exist; the once great kingdom, ruined by the quarrels and obstinate conservatism of its nobles, was divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
The vast addition to her territory which Catherine obtained from the spoils of Poland will not be regarded by the modern mind as a title to glory. More creditable was the wresting of territory from the Turks, but her chief merit lies in the reform-edicts (she counted 211 of her ukases under that head) with which she sought to uplift Russia. Against this we have her personal repute as it is given in many historians. There were those at the time who called her “the Messalina of the north,” and writers on her still differ in their estimate of her moral personality.
That she was, in the narrow sense of the word, flagrantly immoral no one questions. We may recall that Europe at large was still very far from the standard of these matters which adorns our generation. Paris under Louis XV, or the Directorate, or even Napoleon; London under the Georges; even Rome under the Popes of the period would not pass modern scrutiny. Russia was a little more mediæval than the others, and Catherine inherited a court in which an Empress of advanced years and conspicuous piety had given an example of wild debauch. To a woman of Catherine’s views and strong personality there would seem to be no reason for restraint; and she observed none.
We have seen her early lovers, and I do not intend to examine the lengthy gallery with any minuteness. Gregory Orloff, an indolent and very sensuous Adonis, enjoyed her extravagant favour until 1772. His three brothers and he cost her, in those few years, about nine million dollars. In 1772 she sent Orloff on a mission to the Turks, and during his absence another mere sensualist, Vassiltchikoff, earned her favour. Gregory heard it, and covered the two thousand miles which separated him from St. Petersburg with a speed that beat all records. He was directed to retire to his provincial estate, and from there he bombarded the palace with entreaties. Catherine hardly attended to imperial business for several months. At length she definitely discharged Orloff with an annual income of 75,000 dollars, a present of 10,000 peasants, and the right to use the imperial palaces and horses when he willed.
Vassiltchikoff made way in 1774 to the famous Patiomkin, a different type of man from any of the others. He was in his thirty-fifth year and, as we saw, he had ability. Her letters to him show the nearest approach to tender feeling that we ever find in Catherine, except in her relations with her grandchildren and her dogs. Patiomkin was of an age to take his position philosophically when his two years of intimate relationship were over, and he remained her favourite minister. From first to last it is calculated that he cost her about twenty-five million dollars.
After Patiomkin there was a period of what one is almost tempted to call promiscuity. Man after man was lodged for a brief period in the luxurious chambers near Catherine’s room, and any handsome young officer felt that promotion lay within his power. Stories are told of ambitious young men persistently mistaking their rooms and of Catherine maternally sending them home for correction. No young soldier of athletic build and fair face knew when he would be drafted to the well-known suite, and find a preliminary present of 50,000 dollars in gold in his cabinet. For the closer details of his initiation I must refer the reader to Waliszewski’s “Roman d’une Impératrice.” In 1780 Lanskoi seemed to have taken firmer root, but he died in Catherine’s arms in the same year. Jermoloff succeeded him, and in 1792, when Catherine was sixty-three years old, she adopted her last and strangest lover, Plato Zuboff, a handsome youth of twenty-two. On this series of mere ministers to her pleasure Catherine spent a sum which is estimated at more than forty million dollars. That was a national scandal and entirely unworthy of her character.
It is curious that in other respects Catherine had a great regard for propriety. None dared repeat in her presence the kind of story or verse that would have pleased Peter the Great, and she discharged several officials for loose conduct. She also forbade mixed bathing; though she allowed artists to enter the women’s baths. She was sober in eating and drinking. The chief luxury of her plain table was boiled beef with salted cucumbers, and until her later years, when she took a little wine, she generally drank water coloured with a little gooseberry-juice. She knew well, however, that in other parts of her palace her favourites were enjoying the most luxurious banquets, and she never checked their criminal waste. Her own son, Bobrinski, whom she seems to have regarded with indifference, continually outran his generous income and contracted heavy debts. She virtually exiled him to the provinces. It was reserved for her lovers to riot as they pleased; that is to say, as far as money was concerned, for she had the strictest guard kept upon their conduct.
With all her strength of will and tireless energy she loved social intercourse of the liveliest description. She would play with children, especially her grandchildren, for hours, and she had not the least affectation of haughtiness. Although she never visited her nobles, she was just as reluctant to receive the ceremonious and tedious visits of foreign sovereigns. To her smiling favourites she responded, as we saw, with an almost criminal generosity. When Potiamkin’s niece married, she gave her half a million dollars, though her uncle had already been enriched beyond any man in Russia; and she gave the same sum to the bridegroom to pay his debts. When, on the other hand, she wanted some difficult work done, especially by her commanders, she had a persuasiveness that none could resist. Scores of times her mingled pleading and driving induced her armies to do what seemed to her generals impossible.
She had occasional flashes of temper, but her quick humour seized upon this defect and helped her to control it. This other, occasional self she called “my cousin,” and she watched it carefully. Normally her good nature was remarkable, and one could give three anecdotes in illustration of it for every anecdote that refers to her irregularities. She rose at five or six every morning, and would often light the fire herself. One morning, when she had done this, she heard shrieks and curses up the chimney, and realised that a sweep was at work in it. She hastily put out her fire and asked the man’s pardon. On another occasion it occurred to her to ask, during a long drive, if the coachman and servants had dined. She learned that they had not, and she held up the carriage while they did so. When she heard that a lady she liked was undergoing a dangerous delivery, she had herself driven to the house, and she put on an apron and assisted the midwife. If her pen became bad, she would (or did in one case) scribble on and tell her correspondent that she had not courage to trouble a valet to bring a new one. On one occasion she went out of her room to find a valet for that purpose. She found him playing cards, and she took his hand while he ran for a pen. But perhaps the best anecdote is that which tells of one of her secretaries whom she overheard saying, after she had angrily scolded an ambassador: “What a pity she loses her temper.” He was summoned to her room, and in an agony of apprehension he fell upon his knees. Catherine handed him a diamond snuff-box and quietly advised him in future to take a pinch when he was tempted to give useful advice to his sovereign.
This geniality was in her later years somewhat soured. The first cause of the change was the French Revolution; the second was the unfortunate development of her son Paul. A short consideration of these two points will form a useful introduction to the change which, with the nineteenth century, comes over the rule of the Romanoffs.