[1762 A.D.]
That, in concert with several Russian nobles, of whom Bestuzhev was the chief, Catherine meditated the exclusion of her husband from the throne and the elevation of herself as regent during the minority of her son Paul, is a fact that can no longer be disputed. Hence the criminal condescension of the chancellor to the views of Catherine; hence his efforts to prevail on the empress to nominate the infant Paul as her successor. The indiscretion of the grand duke, who was no favourite with anybody; his frequent complaints of the tutelage in which he was held; his bursts of indignation at his exclusion from the councils of the empire—were carefully related to his aunt, with such exaggeration as were most likely to destroy the last traces of the lingering regard she bore him. All, indeed, who had been the friends of Catherine, all who had shared in the confidence of the minister, might well contemplate with alarm the succession of one that had vowed revenge against the partisans of both. Besides, the contempt which Peter felt, and which he seldom hesitated to express, for the Russian people, rendered his succession far from agreeable to them.
Thus, when, in 1757, Apraxin, field marshal of the Russian forces, invaded Prussia, took Memel, and, near Jägerndorf, obtained a brilliant victory over the troops of Frederick, yet, as if defeated, instantly fell back upon Courland, the cause was something more than the fear of offending Peter. This retrograde movement surprising, as well it might, both the empress and her people, Apraxin was placed under arrest, and the command of the army bestowed on another general. He was tried for the crime, but absolved—a result still more surprising to men who regarded merely the surface of things. The reason was that the grand-chancellor, Bestuzhev, had secretly ordered the marshal to retreat, and was, of course, his protector in the trial. It was not to please the heir-presumptive of the crown, whose blind adoration of the Prussian king was so well known, that Bestuzhev despatched the secret order for Apraxin to retreat: it was that the chiefs of the army, of whom many were his creatures, might be ready to join in effecting the revolution which was meditated. But the ambitious minister, presuming on the distaste which his imperial mistress generally showed for affairs, and still more on her bodily indisposition, which at this time placed her life in danger, proceeded too rapidly. His intrigues were discovered; his letter to the marshal was produced; he was deprived of all his power; and Peter had the joy of seeing him exiled.
The general who succeeded Apraxin obtained advantages over the Russian monarch, which had never been contemplated by his predecessor. But though he took Königsberg, placed most of Prussia under contribution, and defeated the Prussian army in a decisive engagement, he, too, was unwilling to irritate beyond forgiveness the heir of the empire, especially as the reports which daily reached him of Elizabeth’s health convinced him that the succession was not far distant. Under the pretext of illness, he demanded leave to retire. His successor, Soltikov (not, we may be sure, the favourite of that name), was still more successful. Frederick was defeated in one of the best contested battles of this famous war; Berlin was taken, and Kolberg reduced after a vigorous siege. The news of this last success reached the empress, but she was no longer capable of deriving satisfaction from it. Much to her honour, she withstood all the solicitations of the intriguers who wished to exclude her nephew and to place Paul on the throne, under the regency of his mother. She died on the 5th day of January, 1762.[b]
Spread of Art, Literature, and Education under Elizabeth
The empress Elizabeth had a passion for building; Peter the Great’s summer palace and even the empress Anna’s winter palace appeared to her small and confined. Upon the site of the latter she began to build the present edifices; during her reign was also built the vast, elegant, and beautiful palace at Tsarskoi Selo; the palace of Oranienbaum was reconstructed, and the fine churches of the Smolni convent, of Vladimirskaia and of Nicholas Morskoi (in St. Petersburg) were also erected. Some handsome private houses were built by Elizabeth’s noblemen, and in general St. Petersburg, which had not long before been a desert place, consisting chiefly of wooden houses, became greatly embellished; the palace quay, as may be seen from drawings and engravings of the time, already showed a continuous row of huge stone edifices.
Of course all these buildings cost enormous sums which led private persons into debt and the government into superfluous expenditure, but it is impossible not to observe that there was to be seen in this luxury an artistic quality which had never before existed. The finest edifices of that period form a special style, which after temporary neglect is now beginning to be imitated; the creator of this style in Russia was Count Rastrelli—a foreigner, of whom, however, Russia has the right to speak. The palaces and churches built by Rastrelli merit description, and although painting at that time did not represent a very high standard, yet the ceilings painted in accordance with the fashion of the day, with bouquets of flowers and mythological goddesses, even now attract the attention of artists. The grandees gave high prices for pictures by foreign masters; their houses became distinguished not only for their handsome façades but also for the comfort of their interior arrangements; it would hardly be possible, for instance, to imagine anything more nobly elegant than the house of the chancellor Vorontzov (now the corps des Pages).
All these beautiful architectural productions, and likewise those of music and painting, were for the greater part the work of foreign artists—visitors to Russia; but under their influence Russian artists were formed and taste developed. The church of Nicholas Morskoi was built by a pupil of Rastrelli. The almost daily theatrical representations produced at court gave rise to the idea of organising similar representations at the corps des Cadets. The empress took a lively interest in them; she often assisted at them and lent her diamonds for the women’s costumes. In their turn these representations could not but assist the development of a taste for the stage, for dramatic art and literature in general and from amongst the number of cadet actors not a few became well known writers, as for instance Beketov, Kheraskov, and Sumarokov.
We must dwell for a few moments on Sumarokov—a man who in his time enjoyed an extensive literary reputation and secured for himself the appellation of Father of the Russian Stage. The love of literature, and especially of the stage, was already developed in Sumarokov when he was in the corps des Cadets; when he was afterwards made aide-de-camp to Razumovski, he could almost daily assist at operas and ballets. At that period he read with avidity the dramatic authors then in fashion: Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, and Molière became his idols; he decided to try to imitate them in his own native language then very undeveloped, and in 1747 he wrote a tragedy, the Chorists.
It was not the merits of this work, which were very insignificant, but the unwontedness of the appearance of an original Russian tragedy, and besides that the fact of its being in verse, that so astounded and enraptured his contemporaries that they proclaimed Sumarokov the “Russian Racine”; encouraged by such a success he wrote a second and yet, a third tragedy; he took up comedy (for which he had hardly any more vocation) and in fact wrote a whole repertory; there were, however, no actors; because neither in St. Petersburg nor in Moscow did there any longer exist such company and such theatres as were begun in the time of Peter.