Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [287]
First Peter’s widow; then his German niece, the Empress Anna; then for twenty years Peter’s daughter Elizabeth. Each of the possible male heirs had either died or been deposed in months.
It had still been the reign of Empress Elizabeth when Bobrov was born. He remembered it with a smile: those were voluptuous, extravagant years. It was said the old Empress had fifteen thousand dresses and that even her French milliner had finally refused her credit! Yet she had talent: she had built the Winter Palace; her many lovers included some remarkable men like Shuvalov who had founded Moscow University, or Razumovsky the lover of music – men whose names would not only usher in Russia’s greatest age, but would grace European culture too. St Petersburg had become cosmopolitan, looking to the dazzling court of France for inspiration.
And then had come the present golden age.
St Petersburg: city of Catherine. Who would ever have guessed that this insignificant young princess from a minor German court would become sole ruler of Russia? She had come there as a nice, harmless little wife for the heir to the throne, Elizabeth’s nephew Peter; and so she would have remained, if her husband had not become unbalanced. For though he descended from Peter the Great through his mother, the young man was German – and obsessively so. Frederick the Great of Prussia was his hero. He loved drilling soldiers. He hated Russia and said so. And in his poor, long-suffering young wife, he had no interest at all.
What a strange contrast they had made: a blustering youth and a quiet, thoughtful girl; an heir who hated his inheritance, and this foreign princess who converted to Orthodoxy and diligently learned Russian. Though they did produce an heir, Peter soon turned his back on her, took a mistress, and virtually goaded her, out of desperation, into taking lovers of her own. Did he mean, subconsciously, to destroy himself? Bobrov thought so. In any case, when this dark and hated young man succeeded to the Russian throne, and the palace guards led by Catherine’s lover deposed and killed him, Alexander Bobrov was one of many who heaved a sigh of relief.
And who should replace this young monster? Why, who better than his popular young wife, mother of the next male heir, and such a lover of things Russian. Thus, by a strange fluke of fate, had begun the glorious reign of Catherine II.
Catherine the Great. Worthy successor to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, whose work she would complete. Russia was throwing off the last of its chains. In the west, she had already taken back the rest of White Russia from a weakened Poland. In the south, the Turkish fleet had been smashed; and the ancient menace of the Tatar steppe had finally been crushed when Catherine deposed the Crimean Khan and annexed all his lands. To the east, Russia now claimed the entire north Eurasian plain to the Pacific. Across the Caspian Sea, Russian troops had struck into the Asian deserts to the borders of ancient Persia. And only last year, Bobrov had heard, a Russian colony had been set up beyond the Bering Straits, by the coast of Alaska. Perhaps, soon, the western American lands would be hers too!
More daring yet, Catherine even hoped to take Constantinople itself, seat of the Turkish Empire – the ancient Roman capital and home of Orthodoxy! She wanted to set up a sister empire there; and had already named her second grandson Constantine in preparation for the Black Sea empire she planned that he should rule.
Catherine the reformer. Like Peter before her, she wanted Russia to become a modern, secular empire. Slavs, Turks, Tatars, Finns, tribes without number: they were all Russians now. To help colonize the vast steppe-lands she had even imported German settlers. In imperial St Petersburg, eight religions were freely