Having given offense by changing his religion, the prince was compulsorily married to a girl of the lowest birth. A palace was built in his honor, but the material was ice, and all the furniture was composed of the same. The wedding procession, consisting of more than three hundred persons in their national costumes, who had been collected from all the provinces of Russia, passed along the streets. The newly-married couple were mounted in a pagoda on the back of an elephant. When the ball was over, the bride and bridegroom were conducted to their nuptial chamber, like the rest of the house, all of ice, and were there installed in an ice bedstead, and guards were posted at the door to prevent them escaping from the room before morning.
Anne died in 1740, and, after a short interregnum, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I., came to the throne. She inherited all her father’s vices and sensuality, but none of his great qualities. Before she became empress, Elizabeth had outraged all propriety; had openly carried on an improper intercourse with the sub-officers and soldiers of the guards who had been quartered near her dwelling. The lust and drunkenness in which she wallowed indisposed her from all longings after greatness. But there were others who needed her name, and a conspiracy being formed, she became empress in spite of herself. Her chief paramour at the time was Grunstein, sergeant in the guards, who was elevated to the rank of major-general. The other soldiers and non-commissioned officers who had been the ministers of her lewdness were made officers. These individuals frequented the common public houses, got drunk, made their way into the houses of persons of condition, and committed all sorts of depredations with impunity. When the men who could boast of the empress’s favors became intolerable, they were drafted off to the army, as officers in regiments on service.
Elizabeth is said to have been privately married to Razamoffsky, as also to the well-known Chevalier d’Eon, who visited the court of Russia in the disguise of a woman, and undoubtedly enjoyed Elizabeth’s favors, whatever may be the truth about her marriage to him. Elizabeth withdrew herself for whole months from business, and was drunk for days or even weeks consecutively. She had a reputation for humanity; but, although she sentenced no one to death, not less than eighty thousand of her subjects were tortured or sent to Siberia during her reign. Her extravagance was such that when she died there were in her wardrobe some fifteen thousand dresses, thousands of pairs of sleeves, and several hundred pieces of French and other silks.
Catharine II. of Russia was, like Peter, a compound of the noblest intellectual endowments, with a moral organization of unsurpassed depravity. She has usually been considered a monster of lust; but she was no less infamous for her cruelty, and for the total absence of all those qualities and feelings which form the chief grace and beauty of woman’s inner life. Her favorite dining-room in the Tauric palace was adorned with pictures representing the sacking of Ohkzakoff and Ismail, in which the painter had surpassed the gloomy vision of a Carravaggio, and had depicted the assault, the carnage, the mutilation, and all the hideous details of such scenes. In these Catharine is said to have taken great delight. She hated music, and never could permit other sounds than those of drums, trumpets, and similar barbaric instruments within her hearing; and yet it is said that, in her outset in life as Princess of Anhalt Zerbst, she had a womanly heart, delicacy of taste, and refinement of intellect;[276] that it was not till long after her husband, Peter III., had insulted her by open neglect of her very winning person and youthful graces, and had abandoned her for the vulgar and ugly Princess Woronzoff, that she committed herself to the terrible career which she afterward pursued so steadily.
The Duchesse d’Abrantes, in her memoir of Catharine, tells us that her first lover, Soltikoff, was forced upon her as a matter of public policy by the crafty and unscrupulous Bestujeff, the able minister of Elizabeth, for the sake of procuring an heir to the Grand Duke Peter. Catharine remonstrated, and threatened to complain. “To whom will you complain?” asked the minister, coldly. Catharine submitted, and accepted the lover thus imposed upon her. At the time of this adultery for expediency sake, Catharine was deeply intent upon study, with a view to qualify herself worthily for her future destiny, disgusted as she was with the indecencies of the Russian court!
Subsequently, it was considered expedient to remove Soltikoff. Catharine had given birth to a child, and was not pleased with this dismissal; but the impassible Bestujeff only sneered at her remonstrances and professions of affection for the dismissed lover, and recommended her to choose another. This was a lesson she was not slow to carry out. The list of her paramours was little less numerous than that of Elizabeth.
After Catharine had caused Peter III. to be murdered, and had ascended the throne as empress in her own right, she abandoned herself to the fullest gratification of her passions, both royal and personal. Besides the vulgar crowd whom she selected as the recipients of her filthy favors, the world knew, as the public and recognized paramours, the names of Orloff, by whom she had a son called Count Bobruski, Wassilitchikoff, Potemkin, Louskoi, Mornonoff, and Zuboff.
These were appointed in a manner that was reduced to a system, and an etiquette was established as precise as that of naming a state minister. When Catharine was tired of her present favorite, one of her intimate friends was commissioned to look out for another. At other times, her notice having fallen on some young man who pleased her fancy, she signified her wishes to some female friend, and thereupon an entertainment was arranged at the lady’s house, which the empress honored with her presence, and thereby gained an opportunity of closer acquaintanceship with the chosen individual. He then received orders to attend at the palace, where he was introduced to the court physician, and examined as to his general health and physical condition. After this he was placed under the charge of a certain Mademoiselle Protasoff.[277] The various examinations having been successfully passed, the favorite was installed into the regular apartments of office, which were immediately contiguous to those of the empress. On the first day of his installation he received one hundred thousand rubles (about twenty-five thousand dollars) for linen, and an allowance of twelve thousand rubles per month; besides which, all his household expenses were defrayed. He was required to attend the empress wherever she went, and was not permitted to leave the palace without her permission. He might not converse familiarly with other women, and if he dined with his friends, it was imperative that the mistress of the house should be absent.
When a favorite had completed his term of service he received orders to travel, and from that moment all access to her majesty was denied. The favorites rarely rebelled against their destiny in this particular; but Potemkin and Orloff, who had far other views than those of dalliance, had the temerity to disobey the order, and succeeded in retaining power and the friendship of the empress long after their personal claims on her tenderness were at an end. On terminating the intimacy, the favorite usually received magnificent gifts. Potemkin, after he had ceased his functions as favorite, became pander to his royal mistress, thereby securing the double advantage of the favor of the empress and the patronage of the favorite, from whom he levied a handsome fee for the introduction. Potemkin and Orloff were at one period rivals, in which contest Orloff was at last defeated; but when Potemkin reached his pride of place, he became so necessary to Catharine in his higher capacity that he set up and pulled down the favorite of the hour as he pleased, and even ventured upon the most extravagant flights of insolence and personal disrespect to the empress. Orloff had been also the rival of Poniatowski, but his superior capacity and brutal energy of will made him respected and feared by Catharine long after she had ceased to like him.
The pecuniary results to the state, enormous as was the plunder, was perhaps the least of the evils sustained through this system of iniquity. The registered gifts to the twelve favorites amounted to upward of one hundred million dollars.[278] Lanskoi, who had held no political offices, and the whole of whose fortune was drawn from the flagitious profits of his post of dishonor, died, after less than four years of office, worth, in cash only, and exclusive of valuables, seven millions of rubles. Potemkin’s wealth, which was accumulated from all sources of public robbery and private extortion, was fabulous. At his death he owned two hundred thousand serfs; he had whole cupboards filled with gold coin, jewels, and bank-bills; he held thirty-two orders, and his fortune was estimated at sixty million dollars.[279]