CHAPTER VIII. THE AGE OF CATHERINE THE GREAT
We must acknowledge that in many respects Catherine was far from irreproachable; her very accession to the throne casts a dark shadow on her moral image. But the reproaches that must be made to her on this account cannot but be counteracted by the thirty-four years of greatness and prosperity which Russia enjoyed under her and to which the popular voice has given the appellation of the Age of Catherine.—Shehebalski.[b]
[1762-1796 A.D.]
There are few names so popular in Russia and so dear to her as that of Catherine II. The generation of men who belonged to her time spoke of her with the most profound emotion. Memoirs and reminiscences of her contemporaries breathe almost without exception the same ardent devotion—a sort of worship of her. In opposition to these feelings, foreign reports of her represent her as cruel, heartless, and unscrupulous to the last degree. Some authors represent her as a sort of monster. However strange such contradictions may appear, they can readily be accounted for. Foreigners view Catherine II more from the side of her external policy, which was certainly often unsparing and unscrupulous in the means employed; they refer caustically to her private life, which was certainly not irreproachable. Russians, on the other hand, felt above all the influence of her interior administration, which contrasted sharply from that of her predecessors by its mildness, and which was full of useful and liberal reforms. The Russians of her day could not remain indifferent to the glory with which Catherine surrounded Russia. And thus to the descendants of Catherine, acquainted as they are with the reports given of her both by Russians and foreigners, she appears as the two-faced god of antiquity; her visage when turned to the neighbouring powers is stern and unwelcoming; that, on the contrary, which is turned toward Russia is full of majesty and mildness.
[1762 A.D.]
The state of affairs was very much entangled when Catherine ascended the throne, both in the interior of the empire and in respect to exterior policy. One of the first acts of the new empress was the conclusion of peace with all those who had taken part in the Seven Years’ War. Not seeing any advantage to Russia in helping the king of Prussia in his war against the German emperor and his allies, Catherine did not consider it necessary to assist the latter. “I am of tolerably martial tastes,” said she, in the first days after her accession to the throne, to one of the ambassadors to the Russian court, “but I will never begin war without a cause; if I begin war, it will not be as the empress Elizabeth did—to please others, but only when I find it favourable for myself.” These words are characteristic of all Catherine’s further foreign policy; to listen to them was not without profit for foreign courts, which, during the preceding reigns, had certainly been over-spoiled by the complaisance of the Russians.
The next circumstance must have enlightened them still further as to how little Catherine had the intention of allowing herself to be restrained by considerations which did not tend to the furtherance of the glory and prosperity of her dominions. We have already seen by what persistency—sometimes even to the sacrifice of their dignity—the preceding governments had succeeded in obtaining the recognition of their right to the imperial title. France had recognised it only under Elizabeth, and that under the condition that at all foreign courts the Russian ambassador must, as previously, yield the precedence to the French ambassador; the late empress Elizabeth herself engaged that this should be done. When Catherine came to the throne, it was proposed to her to renew this engagement; she, however, very decidedly refused to do so, and commanded that it should be declared that she would break off all relations with those courts that did not recognise her in the quality of empress—a title, she added, which, however, was in no degree more exalted than that of the czars. Such were the first acts of the new empress in regard to foreign governments: they were bold, firm, and determined.[b]
CATHERINE’S OWN VIEWS ON RUSSIA
[1763 A.D.]