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FAMOUS AFFINITIES OF HISTORY


THE ROMANCE OF DEVOTION


BY

LYNDON ORR



VOLUME II of IV.





CONTENTS


  THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN
  MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
  THE STORY OF AARON BURR
  GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
  CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
  NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
  THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
  THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG




THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN


It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived was
in reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that the
greatest Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But the
Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other in
something else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, made
himself so French in sympathy and understanding as to be able to play
upon the imagination of all France as a great musician plays upon a
splendid instrument, with absolute sureness of touch and an ability to
extract from it every one of its varied harmonies. So the Empress
Catharine of Russia--perhaps the greatest woman who ever ruled a
nation--though born of German parents, became Russian to the core and
made herself the embodiment of Russian feeling and Russian aspiration.

At the middle of the eighteenth century Russia was governed by the
Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. In her own time, and
for a long while afterward, her real capacity was obscured by her
apparent indolence, her fondness for display, and her seeming
vacillation; but now a very high place is accorded her in the history
of Russian rulers. She softened the brutality that had reigned supreme
in Russia. She patronized the arts. Her armies twice defeated Frederick
the Great and raided his capital, Berlin. Had Elizabeth lived, she
would probably have crushed him.

In her early years this imperial woman had been betrothed to Louis XV.
of France, but the match was broken off. Subsequently she entered into
a morganatic marriage and bore a son who, of course, could not be her
heir. In 1742, therefore, she looked about for a suitable successor,
and chose her nephew, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp.

Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so splendid a
future, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress next sought for
a girl who might marry the young prince and thus become the future
Czarina. She thought first of Frederick the Great's sister; but
Frederick shrank from this alliance, though it would have been of much
advantage to him. He loved his sister--indeed, she was one of the few
persons for whom he ever really cared. So he declined the offer and
suggested instead the young Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy of
Anhalt-Zerbst.

The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of the
semi-barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.

The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized,
half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneer
of French elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery and
lust. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frederick the Great was
unwilling to have his sister plunged into such a life.

But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia of
Anhalt-Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young girl
willingly accepted, the more so as her mother practically commanded it.
This mother of hers was a grim, harsh German woman who had reared her
daughter in the strictest fashion, depriving her of all pleasure with a
truly puritanical severity. In the case of a different sort of girl
this training would have crushed her spirit; but the Princess Sophia,
though gentle and refined in manner, had a power of endurance which was
toughened and strengthened by the discipline she underwent.

And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was taken by
her mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the Lutheran faith
and was received into the Greek Church, changing her name to Catharine.
Soon after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter,
and from that moment began a career which was to make her the most
powerful woman in the world.

At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and
her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the
fact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair.
Her complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She
had a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself
with such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in
fact she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her
figure was slight and graceful; only in after years did she become
stout. Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive,
pure-minded German maiden, with a character well disciplined, and
possessing reserves of power which had not yet been drawn upon.

Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold his
sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of
Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which
must have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere
boy in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his
vices. Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon
insanity. Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial
aunt, he occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.

Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with a
number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his
delight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for
various military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,
