The Tsarina's Pen

Catherine the Great (ruled 1762-1796) was a prolific letter writer and her missives offer a uniquely intimate view of her personal life and political development (to say nothing of her humor and her passion). Oxford University Press has released a new translation of letters spanning the full length of her reign. These three are from later in her life, as she was fighting wars on two fronts, with Sweden and Turkey.

1784

To Friedrich Melchior Grimm

Catherine exuberantly recounts her activities as an enlightened ruler, a role that she viewed as intimately linked to her cultivated aesthetic tastes. After the secularization of Church estates in 1764 (much to Voltaire’s delight), Catherine continued Peter the Great’s policy of close state control over Church affairs, and in April 1784 she approved a new census and reform of the clergy. But her joy was brutally interrupted by the sudden death of her beloved favorite Alexander Lanskoy on 25 June 1784.

at Tsarskoe Selo, this 7 June 1784

I rose at half past six, and I wrote the following in a certain memorandum that I am writing and that we call “materials”: “NB convents and religious communities are bad legatees: either they manage poorly, or they manage so excessively well that they become unjust.” This fine reflection immediately spawned the idea that I should write to you to tell you that I heard the astonishing Todi sing for the second time yesterday, and that I lost my head over this singer (who is, in my opinion, one of a kind). She proves to me that perfection has its incontestable rights and that the rights of perfection are such that they steal the souls of the wise and the ignorant. Now that I’ve told you this, can you tell me how and why the first and the second idea could go hand in hand and follow one another in my head? I see no analogy between them, unless they were conjoined by my desire to communicate to you both one and the other.

this 2 July

When I began this letter, I was living in happiness and joy, and my days passed so quickly that I knew not what became of them. It is no longer so: I have been plunged into the acutest pain, and my happiness is no more. I thought that I myself would die from the irreparable loss I suffered only a week ago — that of my best friend. I had hoped that he would become the helpmeet of my old age. He worked hard and benefited from it. He had come to share all my tastes. He was a young man whom I was cultivating; who was grateful, gentle, and honest; who shared my woes when I had them and rejoiced at my joys. In a word, I have the misfortune of telling you, through my sobbing,  that General Lanskoy  is no more.  A malignant fever, joined with the quinsy, carried him off in five days to his grave, and my chambers, formerly so pleasant to me, have become a vacant cavern in which I can scarcely even drift like a shadow. A sore throat and a raging fever overcame me on the eve of his death. Nonetheless I am out of bed since yesterday, but so weak and sorely afflicted that at present I cannot see a human face without my sobs robbing me of speech. I can neither sleep nor eat, reading bores me, and it exceeds my strength to write. I do not know what will become of me, but I do know that in my whole life I have never been so miserable as I have been since my best, amiable friend thus abandoned me. I opened my drawer and found this page begun. I traced these lines, but now I can bear it no more.

1789

To Grigory Potemkin

Catherine describes the Battle of Vyborg Bay. The Russian and Swedish navies had been fighting since May in the Gulf of Finland, sometimes within earshot of Catherine at Tsarskoe Selo. On 21 June, the Prince of Nassau-Siegen attacked the Swedish flotilla protecting the main Swedish fleet, which was positioned in Vyborg Bay. The Swedes managed to escape, but lost twelve ships in the process.

Well, friend of my heart, Prince Grigory Alexandrovich, there is plenty to write about. The Swedish king, with his fleet of warships and galleys, was blockaded from 27 May to 21 June, as I wrote you. During all that time, a west wind was blowing, a total headwind directly against our rowed ships. Meanwhile in Petersburg we succeeded in building gunboats to replace those lost by Slizov.¹ Finally, on the 20th there blew a fair wind for our galleys, and Prince Nassau took them into the Berezovye Islands² and engaged in a five-hour battle with the King of Sweden himself and his galleys. After that the Swedish king retreated and went off past Vyborg Bay, where he joined forces with his flotilla of warships and attempted with them to break through our fleet. What happened thanks to the power and wisdom of the Lord? The Swedes ignited three fireships and launched them with the strong north wind against five ships from the squadron under the command of Rear-Admiral Povalishin.³ But the fireships became entangled in two of the Swedish ships, and all five Swedish ships blew up. Of ours not a single one! The Swedes took four hours to sail past Povalishin. You will see what he, and then Khanykov,⁴ captured or sank from the list. I can’t quite recall from memory. Chichagov, Kruse, and Pushkin⁵ weighed anchor and gave chase. I ask you to read what they, too, captured and destroyed.⁶ Nassau gave chase to the Swedish galley fleet and kept pace. One sixty-gun ship surrendered to him. Crown⁷ was near Pitkäpaasi.⁸ Even now he is still sending captured galleys one after another to Kronstadt.⁹ One seventy-four- and another sixty-four-gun ship have been brought to Revel, and even now the hunt continues. In a word, we still haven’t managed to gather all the details about this complete victory: there are up to 5,000 prisoners, up to 800 cannons, and we do not yet have the number of small vessels. As for the king — well, different things are being said. Some maintain that he escaped on a launch flanked by two supply ships. Others say that he was on his yacht,  Amphion. When it sank, he supposedly got off and boarded a galley. When this galley was captured, he jumped ship onto a sloop; when this sloop was also captured, he escaped into a small boat, and this boat sailed off. His breakfast was taken captive: it consisted of six dry biscuits, a smoked goose, and two carafes of vodka. The king’s brother departed to Sveaborg¹⁰ on his own badly battered ship, ahead of which Chichagov is now cruising.

I congratulate you on the holiday today and on the victory. God has released us from this burden, and Chichagov has once again made you happy, as you see. Yesterday, on the anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, I held a prayer service here. On Sunday I shall travel to the city and conduct prayers in the naval church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker.¹¹

Farewell, may God be with you. It is being said that after the first of July the Prussians will be on the march, about which I shall similarly inform you: they wish to go to Riga by passing through Courland, but the king has already long been in Breslau, and negotiations are still ongoing in Reichenbach.¹²

1. Peter Borisovich Slizov was the Prince of Nassau-Siegen’s predecessor as commander of the Russian galley fleet.

2. Islands in the Gulf of Finland between Vyborg Bay and St. Petersburg.

3. Rear-Admiral Illarion Afanasyevich Povalishin (c.1739-1799) received the Order of St. George, second class, for his role in the Battle of Vyborg Bay.

4. Rear-Admiral Pyotr Ivanovich Khanykov received the Order of St. George, third class, and a golden sword for his role in the Battle of Vyborg Bay.

5. Alexei Vasilyevich Musin-Pushkin served in the Baltic fleet from 1789.

6. Catherine included with her letter a more formal account of the outcomes
of the battle.

7. Robert Crown (1754-1841), a Scotsman in Russian service since 1788.

8. An island off the coast of Finland, on the other side of the entrance to Vyborg Bay from the Berezovye Islands.

9. Fortress and port serving St. Petersburg, located on an island in the Gulf of Finland.

10. Now the Finnish fortress of Suomenlinna in Helsinki.

11. St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral in St. Petersburg, build in the eighteenth century as the principal church of the Russian navy.

12. Negotiations between the Prussians and the Austrians began at Reichenbach, in Prussian Silesia, on 27 June 1790 (NS) and lasted for a month.

1790

To Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne

Late in the year, Catherine takes stock of the challenges posed by Russia’s complex geopolitical position, while growing unrest in France feeds into her general worry about stability and a European order possibly spiralling out of control. This letter also caused a disruption in her correspondence with de Ligne: he allowed it to be leaked to the newspapers, risking serious diplomatic embarrassment for Catherine. He received a serious scolding and a few months’ silence before she resumed correspondence as usual.

Prince de Ligne, Sir, have no fear, I shall never treat your letters as I do my neighbors’. Your letters always give me pleasure, while the others frequently bore me. Moreover, I hand them over very quickly to the profound scrutiny of my council, with whom I always agree – whenever they agree with me. Meanwhile, I gladly take care of replying  to you myself. The newspapers from Peking report that my Chinese neighbor, whose little eyes you so respectfully mention, has been carrying out with a truly exemplary meticulousness the endless rituals to which he is subjected. As for my Persian neighbors, they slaughter one another regularly every month. They bear no small resemblance to the glaciers of the Arctic Sea that crash into one another, smashing one another to bits during storms. The Poles, in order to put the finishing touches to their liberty, are preparing to yield to the most arbitrary military despotism.¹ Their decision is all the more voluntary insofar as it is up to each person to accept or refuse the ringing coins that they will be given in return. Selim and his Divan² have decided that it is time to go back to school and will leave the care of badly messing up their affairs to their tutors. That is convenient to say the least.

In the meantime, we shall beat them and whip them, as is our laudable custom, on land and sea. You, you are making peace … The two barons would like to consolidate the peace of Värälä with reciprocal embassies. England is arming, Spain negotiating. The King of Prussia [Frederick William II] has pretensions to dictatorship of a kind which his uncle [Frederick the Great] could not have entertained in 1762. France has 1,200 lawmakers whom no one obeys apart from the king. Holland would much prefer to profit from its commerce rather than squander on armaments, etc. But I forget myself, I was not going to speak to you of anyone other than my neighbors. Instead, I have done an entire tour of Europe and Asia. By bringing me your letter, to which this serves as a response, Count Starhemberg spared me the cost of postage,³ whereby you have done my finances a good turn.⁴ According to those better informed than myself, my finances are in a very poor state, since I have sustained two wars at the same time without coming up with so much as the smallest little tax, whether because I lacked the means to do so or perhaps because of ignorance. You are very lucky with your cousin: Count Starhemberg appears to be thoroughly likeable. I hope that he will return from his visit here contented and that he will find you healthier than when he left you. Farewell, my Prince, rest assured of my unchanging regard for you.

Catherine
at St Petersburg, this 6 November 1790

1. Under the influence of Prussia, Poland was dismantling its old republican system, which Russia had guaranteed because the need for all legislation to be passed unanimously kept the government weak. The new system, if it had been implemented, would have significantly strengthened the Polish government’s capacity to act.

2. The privy council of the Ottoman Empire, chaired by the sultan.

3. Count von Starhemberg brought to St. Petersburg the news of Leopold II’s accession.

4. Recipients of letters paid the postage; Voltaire frequently complained that the volume of letters he received would impoverish him. Catherine uses the motif sarcastically to contradict the constant rumors that her finances were failing.