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                                MEMOIRS
                                OF THE
                         EMPRESS CATHERINE II.

                          WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

                     WITH A PREFACE BY A. HERZEN.

                      TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

                               NEW YORK:
                       D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
                          346 & 348 BROADWAY.
                              M.DCCC.LIX.




PREFACE.


Some hours after the death of the Empress Catherine, her son, the
Emperor Paul, ordered Count Rostoptchine to put the seals upon her
papers. He was himself present at the arrangement of these papers. Among
them was found the celebrated letter of Alexis Orloff,[1] in which, in a
cynical tone and with a drunken hand, he announced to the Empress the
assassination of her husband Peter III. There was also a manuscript,
written entirely by the hand of Catherine herself, and enclosed in a
sealed envelope, bearing this inscription:--"_To his Imperial Highness,
the Cesarewitch and Grand Duke Paul, my beloved son._" Under this
envelope was the manuscript of the Memoirs which we now publish.

The manuscript terminates abruptly towards the close of the year 1759.
It is said that there were with it some detached notes, which would have
served as materials for its continuation. Some persons affirm that Paul
threw these into the fire; but nothing certain is known upon this point.
Paul kept his mother's manuscript a great secret, and never entrusted
it to any one but the friend of his childhood Prince Alexander
Kourakine. The Prince took a copy of it. Some twenty years after the
death of Paul, Alexander Tourgeneff and Prince Michael Worontzoff
obtained copies from the transcript of Kourakine. The Emperor Nicholas
having heard of this, gave orders to the Secret Police to seize all the
copies. Amongst them was one written at Odessa, by the hand of the
celebrated poet Pouschkine. A complete stop was now put to the further
circulation of the Memoirs.

The Emperor Nicholas had the original brought to him by the Count D.
Bloudoff, read it, sealed it with the great seal of state, and ordered
it to be kept in the imperial archives, among the most secret documents.

To these details, which I extract from a notice communicated to me, I
ought to add that the first person who spoke to me on the subject was
Constantine Arsenieff, the preceptor of the present Emperor. He told me,
in 1840, that he had obtained permission to read many secret documents
relative to the events which followed the death of Peter I, up to the
reign of Alexander I. Among these documents, he was authorized to read
the Memoirs of Catherine II. (At that time he was teaching the Modern
History of Russia to the Grand Duke, the heir presumptive.)

During the Crimean war, the archives were transferred to Moscow. In the
month of March, 1855, the present Emperor had the manuscript brought to
him to read. Since that period one or two copies have again circulated
at Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is from one of these that we now
publish the Memoirs. As to their authenticity, there is not the least
room for doubt. Besides, it is only necessary to read two or three pages
of the text to be quite satisfied on the point.

We have abstained from all corrections of the style, in every case in
which it was not evident that the copy presented some fault of
transcription.

Passing to the Memoirs themselves, what do we find?

The early years of Catherine II--of that woman-Emperor, who occupied for
more than a quarter of a century all contemporary minds, from Voltaire
and Frederic II to the Khan of the Crimea and the Chiefs of the
Kirghis--_her young days described by herself!_... What is there for
the Editor to add to this?

In reading these pages, we behold her entering on the scene, we see her
forming herself to that which she afterwards became. A frolicsome girl
of fourteen, her head dressed "_a la Moise_," fair, playful, betrothed
of a little idiot, the Grand Duke, she has already caught the disease of
the Winter Palace--the thirst of dominion. One day, while "perched" with
the Grand Duke upon a window-sill, and joking with him, she saw Count
Lestocq enter: "Pack up your things," he said, "you are off for
Germany." The young idiot seemed but little affected by the threatened
separation. "It was pretty nearly a matter of indifference to me also,"
says the little German girl; "_but the Crown of Russia was not so_,"
adds the Grand Duchess.

Here we have, in the bud, the Catherine of 1762!

To dream of the crown, however, was quite natural in the atmosphere of
that court; natural not only for the betrothed of the Heir Presumptive,
but for every one. The groom Biren, the singer Rasoumowsky, the Prince
Dolgorouky, the plebeian Menchikoff, the oligarch Volynski--every one
was anxious for a shred of the imperial mantle. The crown of Russia,
after Peter I, was a _res nullius_.

Peter I, a terrorist and reformer, before all things, had no respect for
legitimacy. His absolutism sought to reach even beyond the tomb. He gave
himself the right of appointing his successor, and instead of appointing
him, he contented himself with ordering the assassination of his own
son.

After the death of Peter, the nobles assembled for deliberation.
Menchikoff put a stop to all discussion, and proclaimed as empress his
old mistress, the widow of a brave Swedish dragoon, slain upon the field
of battle, the widow of Peter also, to whom Menchikoff had resigned her
"through devotion" to his master.

The reign of Catherine I was short. After her the crown passed from head
to head as chance directed: from the once Livonian tavern-keeper, to a
street-boy (Peter II); from this street-boy who died of small-pox, to
the Duchess of Courland (Anne); from the Duchess of Courland to a
Princess of Mecklenburg (wife of a Prince of Brunswick), who reigned in
the name of an infant in the cradle (Ivan); from this boy, born _too
late_ to reign, the crown passed to the head of a woman born _too
soon_--Elizabeth. She it is who represents legitimacy.

Tradition broken, the people and the state completely separated by the
reforms of Peter I, _coups d'etat_ and palace revolutions were the order
of the day; nothing was fixed. The inhabitants of St. Petersburg, when
retiring at night, knew not under whose government they should awake in
the morning; they consequently took but little interest in changes