Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power by Henri Troyat Read Free Book Online

people [the Dolgorukys] are encouraging the various vices by fostering [in the Tsar] the sins of the Russia of the past. I know an apartment contiguous to the billiard parlor where the deputy governor [Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky] hosts pleasure parties for him… they don’t go to bed until 7:00AM.”4
    That these young people should satiate their appetites in such entertainment suited Menshikov just fine. As long as Peter and his aunts continued to dope themselves in love intrigues and casual affairs, their political influence would be nil. On the other hand, the “Most Serene One” feared that Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein, with his exasperating ambitions, might be ignoring his wife Anna’s warnings and might be overdoing things, in an effort to destroy the modus vivendi that the Supreme Privy Council had managed to impose upon the junior tsar and his close relatives. In order to cut short Charles Frederick’s foolish dreams, Menshikov took away from him (via an ukase that escaped Peter II’s vigilance one evening during a drunken binge) the island of Oesel, in the Gulf of Riga, which the couple had received as a wedding present, and cut back the duke’s expense account. These displays of pettiness were accompanied by so many minor vexations at the hand of Menshikov that the Duke and his wife were annoyed for good and decided to leave the capital, where they were treated like poor relations and intruders. Hugging her sister before embarking with her husband for Kiel, with heart overflowing, Anna was gripped by a disastrous presentiment. She confided to her friends that she was very much afraid of Menshikov’s intrigues, on behalf of Elizabeth as well as Peter. She felt he was an implacable enemy of their family. Because of his giant size and his broad shoulders, he was called the “proud Goliath,” and Anna beseeched Heaven that Peter II, a new David, should bring down the monster of pride and spite that had such a hold on the empire.
    After her sister departed for Holstein, Elizabeth tried at first to forget her sorrows and her fears in a swirl of romance and intrigue. Peter assisted her in this distracting enterprise by inventing new excuses for fooling around and intoxicating themselves every day. He was only 14 years old, yet he felt the desires of a man. To secure greater freedom of movement, Elizabeth and he emigrated to the old imperial palace of Peterhof. For a moment, they could believe that their secret vows were about to be fulfilled; for Menshikov, although he enjoyed an iron constitution, suddenly had a fainting spell and was spitting blood. He had to be confined to bed. According to the echoes that reached Peterhof, the doctors considered that the indisposition could be long lasting, if not fatal.
    During this vacuum of power, the usual advisers met to comment on current matters. In addition to the illness of His Most Serene, another event of importance occurred meanwhile, and an embarrassing one, at that. Peter the Great’s first wife, the Tsarina Eudoxia, whom he had imprisoned in the convent at Suzdal and then transferred to the fortress at Schlusselburg, had suddenly resurfaced. The emperor had repudiated her in order to marry Catherine. An old woman, weak but still valiant after thirty years of reclusion, Eudoxia was the mother of the Tsarevich Alexis who had died under torture and the grandmother of Tsar Peter II who, by the way, had never met her and did not see any need to do so.
    Now that she was out of prison and Menshikov, her sworn enemy, was tied to his bed, the other members of the Supreme Privy Council thought that the grandson of this martyr, so worthy in her effacement, should pay her a visit of homage. They considered that to be even more advisable since the people saw Eudoxia as a saint who had been sacrificed for reasons of State. There was only one hitch, but it was a sizeable one: wouldn’t Menshikov be furious if they took such an initiative without consulting