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

for Peter II. To hear them tell it, their host, consumed with pride, conducted himself in every way as though he were the master of the empire. Ostermann declared that he was offended as much as if it had been him that the Serene One had slighted. The next day, taking advantage of an absence of Peter II, who had gone out hunting with Elizabeth, Ostermann received Menshikov at Peterhof and reproached him, in a dry tone, in the name of all the sincere friends of the imperial family, for his unseemly conduct towards His Majesty. Piqued by these remonstrances from a subordinate, Menshikov took umbrage and returned to St. Petersburg, contemplating a revenge that would forever remove the desire to plot against him from this scheming band.
    Arriving at his palace on Vasilievsky Island, he was stunned to see that all of Peter II’s furniture had been removed and transported to the Summer Palace (Peterhof) where the tsar, he was informed, intended to reside from now on. Outraged, the Most Serene Prince rushed to the headquarters of the Guard to demand an explanation from the officers charged with keeping watch over the tsar. All the sentinels had already been relieved and the station chief announced, with an air of contrition, that he was only following imperial orders. Apparently, there was another hand pulling the strings. What might have looked, at first, like the whim of a prince seemed, in fact, to signal a final breakdown. For Menshikov, this was the collapse of an edifice that he had been building for years and that he had believed to be as solid as the granite of the quays along the Neva.
    What a catastrophe! Who was behind it? There could be no doubt. Alexis Dolgoruky and his son, the ravishing and underhanded Ivan, must have masterminded it all. How could Menshikov save whatever might still be salvageable? Should he beg for leniency from those who had cut him down, or turn to Peter and try to plead his cause directly? Even as he pondered these unpalatable options, he heard that the tsar, having joined his aunt Elizabeth at the Summer Palace, had convened the members of the Supreme Privy Council and that he was discussing with them what additional sanctions should be taken. The verdict came down before the defendant could even prepare his defense. Most probably egged on by Elizabeth, Natalya and the Dolgoruky clan, Peter ordered the Serene One arrested. When Major General Simon Saltykov came to inform him of his condemnation, Menshikov could only write a letter of protest and justification, which he doubted would ever be transmitted to the intended recipient.
    The next day the charges began to mount, increasingly iniquitous, increasingly defamatory. Stripped of his titles and privileges, Menshikov was exiled to his own estate, for life - in other words, he was permanently grounded. With whatever possessions he could throw together on the spot, the condemned left St. Petersburg by slow caravan - and no one came out to see him off. He who had been everything, yesterday, was a nonentity today. His most enthusiastically obliged friends became his worst enemies. And the tsar’s hatred continued unabated. At every stage along the road, a missive from the palace announced a new disgrace for him. At Vyshny-Volochok came an order to disarm the deposed favorite’s servants; at Tver, it was announced that he had taken too many servants, horses and carriages - those in excess were to be returned to St. Petersburg; at Klin came the order to confiscate from Miss Maria Menshikov, ex-fiancée of the tsar, the ring by which he had pledged his troth; and finally, at the approaches to Moscow, came an order to by-pass the old city of kings and to continue without delay to Orenburg, in the remote province of Riazan.6 Reaching that city at the border between European Russia and Western Siberia, on November 3, Menshikov, his heart in his throat, got his first view of the place to which he had been relegated. The house, enclosed behind the