No More Learning

Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a
beautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she was
"the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal
of a dream of love. " Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of
gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was dazzling. But by
the king's orders she had been forced to marry a hunchback--a man whose
very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil living that they would
often fail to support him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing,
screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.

It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at
his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her
eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from
her bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade the
sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she was
not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her husband,
having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she had been
insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and hold the love
of Maurice de Saxe.

Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to
dine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her
on the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very
much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so utterly
dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the indescribable
attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she was small and
fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was reserved and
melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.

At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the
man to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full
surrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It appeared
to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until that moment.
She cried out:

"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live! "

It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck
of this impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and
the unselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne
Lecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any other
man with the slightest interest. For nine long years the two were bound
together, though there were strange events to ruffle the surface of
their love.

Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition to
be a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which in
after years was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliant
victory of Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tired
of recalling. Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and a
certain restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt that
to remain in the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the whole
of a man's career.

Then the Grand Duchy of Courland--at that time a vassal state of Poland,
now part of Russia--sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eager to secure
its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and the chief of
a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was needed to
carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke--the Grand Duchess Anna,
niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia--as soon as she
had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to acquire the duchy
if he would only marry her. He did not utterly refuse. Still another
woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Peter the
Great's daughter, made him very much the same proposal.

Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man like
Maurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of them
inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the
first was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman
empresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described
as indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in
the world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave
them over to favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people.
She was unquestionably endowed with the magnetic gift of winning hearts.

Adrienne, who was left behind in Paris, knew very little of what was
going on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that if
her lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other was
that without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he would then
return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. It proved
the height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might, Maurice
should be Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. She gathered
together her whole fortune, sold every jewel that she possessed, and
sent her lover the sum of nearly a million francs.

This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because
of various intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne of
Courland, and he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, and
without even the grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed and
raged over his ill luck. She merely soothed and petted him, though she
had heard that he had thought of marrying another woman to secure
the dukedom. In one of her letters she bursts out with the pitiful
exclamation:

I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry out
against such treachery? This man surely ought to know me--he ought to
love me. Oh, my God! What are we--what ARE we?

But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, though
there were frightful scenes between them--times when he cruelly
reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts
of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or
less obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the
court--facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights--resolved that
she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it
openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times, when
the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with the duchess.

Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival
knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in
the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be
a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne,
of course, in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a large
number of her lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible,
to break off the play. Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchess
arrayed herself in jewels and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box,
where she could watch the coming storm and gloat over the discomfiture
of her rival.

When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproar
began. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devised
against her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-like
majesty of her bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even the
hired lackeys were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly across
the stage and fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the three
insulting lines which came to her at that moment of the play:

I am not of those women void of shame,
Who, savoring in crime the joys of peace,
Harden their faces till they cannot blush!

The whole house rose and burst forth into tremendous applause. Adrienne
had won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidation
and hurried from the theater.

But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds were
committed by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was a
common trade. To remove a rival was as usual a thing in the eighteenth
century as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.

Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne Lecouvreur
was acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power and instinctive
art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightful pains. Her
anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet she had the
courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and was carried home.

Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than her
life had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and also
a Jesuit priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless she
would declare that she repented of her theatrical career. She stubbornly
refused, since she believed that to be the greatest actress of her time
was not a sin. Yet still the priest insisted.

Then came the final moment.

"Weary and revolting against this death, this destiny, she stretched her
arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stood near
by and cried--her last cry of passion:

"'There is my world, my hope--yes, and my God! '"

The bust was one of Maurice de Saxe.





THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART


The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them are
equally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparatively
young, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, more
vividly than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldest
reigning family in Europe, tracing its beginnings backward until
they are lost in the Dark Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia are
comparatively modern, so far as concerns their royalty. The offshoots of
the Bourbons carry on a very proud tradition in the person of the King
of Spain, although France, which has been ruled by so many members of
the family, will probably never again behold a Bourbon king. The deposed
Braganzas bear a name which is ancient, but which has a somewhat tinsel
sound.

The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had the
good taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon,
dining at a table full of monarchs, when he heard one of them
deferentially alluding to the Bonaparte family as being very old and
noble, exclaimed:

"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo! "

And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle. de
Montijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of his
family. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped to
reconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.

In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at least
to the imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain within
itself the very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, and
royal. It calls to memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose short
reign was replete with romance in England and France and Austria and the
Holy Land.

But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royal
family of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and which
summons up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is the name
of Stuart, about which a whole volume might be written to recall its
suggestions and its reminiscences.

The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his name
from the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the family
for generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with Princess
Marjory Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early years
of the fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabeth
of England, her rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,
united under one crown two kingdoms that had so long been at almost
constant war.

It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory,
little wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiously
humble, he should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest and
become their master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended with
Elizabeth, must have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was small
and bleak and cold, and who could not control their own vassals.

One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of the
English court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedant
and bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that of
Elizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was very
far from being a fool.

In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln--an unkingly
figure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could rise
to the dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was the
only Stuart who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace.
His son, Charles I. , was perhaps one of the worst rulers that England
has ever had; yet his uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsome
face, his graceful bearing, and the strong religious element in his
character, together with the fact that he was put to death after being
treacherously surrendered to his enemies--all these have combined to
make almost a saint of him. There are Englishmen to-day who speak of him
as "the martyr king," and who, on certain days of the year, say prayers
that beg the Lord's forgiveness because of Charles's execution.

The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded to
perpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do many
things that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present King
of England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is the
true ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentiment
which lingers among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts were
the last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the
grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning family
in England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through a
Stuart--descended on the distaff side from James I. , and winding its way
through Hanover.

This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reason and
belongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is it that
it has shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. For instance, Sir
Walter Scott was a devoted adherent of the house of Hanover. When George
IV. visited Edinburgh, Scott was completely carried away by his loyal
enthusiasm. He could not see that the man before him was a drunkard and
braggart. He viewed him as an incarnation of all the noble traits that
ought to hedge about a king. He snatched up a wine-glass from which
George had just been drinking and carried it away to be an object of
reverence for ever after. Nevertheless, in his heart, and often in his
speech, Scott seemed to be a high Tory, and even a Jacobite.

There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to say
with a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial court
of France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness and
frivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous,
and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less,
after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romantic
ballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to have remarked with a
sort of sigh:

"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really to the
Stuarts! "

Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. were
childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a
family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said
many things, and among them this was the most striking:

"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possibly
make a worse mess of it than our fellows have! "

But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage came
Victoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave England
to the Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies of
both houses.

The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas to
America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking
history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,
and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense
womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one
observed in her. So, too, with Charles I. , romantic figure and knightly
gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his
execution was necessary to the growth of freedom.

Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II. , that very different
type, with his gaiety, his good-fellowship, and his easy-going ways. It
is not surprising that his people, most of whom never saw him, were very
fond of him, and did not know that he was selfish, a loose liver, and
almost a vassal of the king of France.

So it is not strange that the Stuarts, with all their arts and graces,
were very hard to displace. James II. , with the aid of the French,
fought hard before the British troops in Ireland broke the backs of
both his armies and sent him into exile. Again in 1715--an episode
perpetuated in Thackeray's dramatic story of Henry Esmond--came the son
of James to take advantage of the vacancy caused by the death of Queen
Anne. But it is perhaps to this claimant's son, the last of the militant
Stuarts, that more chivalrous feeling has been given than to any other.

To his followers he was the Young Chevalier, the true Prince of Wales;
to his enemies, the Whigs and the Hanoverians, he was "the Pretender. "
One of the most romantic chapters of history is the one which tells
of that last brilliant dash which he made upon the coast of Scotland,
landing with but a few attendants and rejecting the support of a French
army.

"It is not with foreigners," he said, "but with my own loyal subjects,
that I wish to regain the kingdom for my father. "

It was a daring deed, and the spectacular side of it has been often
commemorated, especially in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. There we see
the gallant prince moving through a sort of military panorama. Most of
the British troops were absent in Flanders, and the few regiments that
could be mustered to meet him were appalled by the ferocity and reckless
courage of the Highlanders, who leaped down like wildcats from their
hills and flung themselves with dirk and sword upon the British cannon.

We see Sir John Cope retiring at Falkirk, and the astonishing victory of
Prestonpans, where disciplined British troops fled in dismay through the
morning mist, leaving artillery and supplies behind them. It is Scott
again who shows us the prince, master of Edinburgh for a time, while the
white rose of Stuart royalty held once more the ancient keep above the
Scottish capital. Then we see the Chevalier pressing southward into
England, where he hoped to raise an English army to support his own.
But his Highlanders cared nothing for England, and the English--even the
Catholic gentry--would not rise to support his cause.

Personally, he had every gift that could win allegiance. Handsome,
high-tempered, and brave, he could also control his fiery spirit and
listen to advice, however unpalatable it might be.

The time was favorable. The British troops had been defeated on the
Continent by Marshal Saxe, of whom I have already written, and by
Marshal d'Estrees. George II. was a king whom few respected. He could
scarcely speak anything but German. He grossly ill-treated his wife. It
is said that on one occasion, in a fit of temper, he actually kicked the
prime minister. Not many felt any personal loyalty to him, and he spent
most of his time away from England in his other domain of Hanover.

But precisely here was a reason why Englishmen were willing to put up
with him. As between him and the brilliant Stuart there would have been
no hesitation had the choice been merely one of men; but it was believed
that the return of the Stuarts meant the return of something like
absolute government, of taxation without sanction of law, and of
religious persecution. Under the Hanoverian George the English people
had begun to exercise a considerable measure of self-government. Sharp
opposition in Parliament compelled him time and again to yield; and when
he was in Hanover the English were left to work out the problem of free
government.

Hence, although Prince Charles Edward fascinated all who met him, and
although a small army was raised for his support, still the unromantic,
common-sense Englishmen felt that things were better than in the days
gone by, and most of them refused to take up arms for the cause which
sentimentally they favored. Therefore, although the Chevalier stirred
all England and sent a thrill through the officers of state in London,
his soldiers gradually deserted, and the Scots insisted on returning
to their own country. Although the Stuart troops reached a point as far
south as Derby, they were soon pushed backward into Scotland, pursued by
an army of about nine thousand men under the Duke of Cumberland, son of
George II.

Cumberland was no soldier; he had been soundly beaten by the French
on the famous field of Fontenoy. Yet he had firmness and a sort of
overmastering brutality, which, with disciplined troops and abundant
artillery, were sufficient to win a victory over the untrained
Highlanders.

When the battle came five thousand of these mountaineers went roaring
along the English lines, with the Chevalier himself at their head. For
a moment there was surprise. The Duke of Cumberland had been drinking
so heavily that he could give no verbal orders. One of his officers,
however, is said to have come to him in his tent, where he was trying to
play cards.

"What disposition shall we make of the prisoners? " asked the officer.

The duke tried to reply, but his utterance was very thick.

"No quarter! " he was believed to say.

The officer objected and begged that such an order as that should
be given in writing. The duke rolled over and seized a sheaf of
playing-cards. Pulling one out, he scrawled the necessary order, and
that was taken to the commanders in the field.
The Highlanders could not stand the cannon fire, and the English won.
Then the fury of the common soldiery broke loose upon the country.

There was a reign of fantastic and fiendish brutality. One provost
of the town was violently kicked for a mild remonstrance about the
destruction of the Episcopalian meeting-house; another was condemned
to clean out dirty stables. Men and women were whipped and tortured on
slight suspicion or to extract information. Cumberland frankly professed
his contempt and hatred of the people among whom he found himself, but
he savagely punished robberies committed by private soldiers for their
own profit.

"Mild measures will not do," he wrote to Newcastle.

When leaving the North in July, he said:

"All the good we have done is but a little blood-letting, which has only
weakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble to fear
that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our
family. "

Such was the famous battle of Culloden, fought in 1746, and putting a
final end to the hopes of all the Stuarts. As to Cumberland's order for
"No quarter," if any apology can be made for such brutality, it must be
found in the fact that the Highland chiefs had on their side agreed to
spare no captured enemy.

The battle has also left a name commonly given to the nine of diamonds,
which is called "the curse of Scotland," because it is said that on that
card Cumberland wrote his bloodthirsty order.

Such, in brief, was the story of Prince Charlie's gallant attempt to
restore the kingdom of his ancestors. Even when defeated, he would not
at once leave Scotland. A French squadron appeared off the coast near
Edinburgh. It had been sent to bring him troops and a large supply
of money, but he turned his back upon it and made his way into the
Highlands on foot, closely pursued by English soldiers and Lowland
spies.

This part of his career is in reality the most romantic of all. He was
hunted closely, almost as by hounds. For weeks he had only such sleep
as he could snatch during short periods of safety, and there were times
when his pursuers came within an inch of capturing him. But never in his
life were his spirits so high.

It was a sort of life that he had never seen before, climbing the mighty
rocks, and listening to the thunder of the cataracts, among which he
often slept, with only one faithful follower to guard him. The story
of his escape is almost incredible, but he laughed and drank and rolled
upon the grass when he was free from care. He hobnobbed with the most
suspicious-looking caterans, with whom he drank the smoky brew of the
North, and lived as he might on fish and onions and bacon and wild fowl,
with an appetite such as he had never known at the luxurious court of
Versailles or St. -Germain.

After the battle of Culloden the prince would have been captured had not
a Scottish girl named Flora Macdonald met him, caused him to be dressed
in the clothes of her waiting-maid, and thus got him off to the Isle of
Skye.

There for a time it was impossible to follow him; and there the two
lived almost alone together. Such a proximity could not fail to stir the
romantic feeling of one who was both a youth and a prince. On the other
hand, no thought of love-making seems to have entered Flora's mind.
If, however, we read Campbell's narrative very closely we can see that
Prince Charles made every advance consistent with a delicate remembrance
of her sex and services.

It seems to have been his thought that if she cared for him, then the
two might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor. The
youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together in the
long, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the sea.
The prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumble his
golden hair with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresses
which she preserved to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But to
the last he was either too high or too low for her, according to her own
modest thought. He was a royal prince, the heir to a throne, or else he
was a boy with whom she might play quite fancy-free. A lover he could
not be--so pure and beautiful was her thought of him.

These were perhaps the most delightful days of all his life, as they
were a beautiful memory in hers. In time he returned to France and
resumed his place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuart
prince who styled himself James III. , and still kept up the appearance
of a king in exile. As he watched the artifice and the plotting of
these make-believe courtiers he may well have thought of his innocent
companion of the Highland wilds.

As for Flora, she was arrested and imprisoned for five months on English
vessels of war. After her release she was married, in 1750; and she and
her husband sailed for the American colonies just before the Revolution.
In that war Macdonald became a British officer and served against his
adopted countrymen. Perhaps because of this reason Flora returned alone
to Scotland, where she died at the age of sixty-eight.

The royal prince who would have given her his easy love lived a life of
far less dignity in the years that followed his return to France. There
was no more hope of recovering the English throne. For him there were
left only the idle and licentious diversions of such a court as that in
which his father lived.

At the death of James III. , even this court was disintegrated, and
Prince Charles led a roving life under the title of Earl of Albany. In
his wanderings he met Louise Marie, the daughter of a German prince,
Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg. She was only nineteen years of age when
she first felt the fascination that he still possessed; but it was an
unhappy marriage for the girl when she discovered that her husband was a
confirmed drunkard.

Not long after, in fact, she found her life with him so utterly
intolerable that she persuaded the Pope to allow her a formal
separation. The pontiff intrusted her to her husband's brother, Cardinal
York, who placed her in a convent and presently removed her to his own
residence in Rome.

Here begins another romance. She was often visited by Vittorio Alfieri,
the great Italian poet and dramatist. Alfieri was a man of wealth. In
early years he divided his time into alternate periods during which
he either studied hard in civil and canonical law, or was a constant
attendant upon the race-course, or rushed aimlessly all over Europe
without any object except to wear out the post-horses which he used in
relays over hundreds of miles of road. His life, indeed, was eccentric
almost to insanity; but when he had met the beautiful and lonely
Countess of Albany there came over him a striking change. She influenced
him for all that was good, and he used to say that he owed her all that
was best in his dramatic works.

Sixteen years after her marriage her royal husband died, a worn-out,
bloated wreck of one who had been as a youth a model of knightliness and
manhood. During his final years he had fallen to utter destitution, and
there was either a touch of half contempt or a feeling of remote kinship
in the act of George III. , who bestowed upon the prince an annual
pension of four thousand pounds. It showed most plainly that England was
now consolidated under Hanoverian rule.

When Cardinal York died, in 1807, there was no Stuart left in the male
line; and the countess was the last to bear the royal Scottish name of
Albany.

After the prince's death his widow is said to have been married to
Alfieri, and for the rest of her life she lived in Florence, though
Alfieri died nearly twenty-one years before her.

Here we have seen a part of the romance which attaches itself to the
name of Stuart--in the chivalrous young prince, leading his Highlanders
against the bayonets of the British, lolling idly among the Hebrides,
or fallen, at the last, to be a drunkard and the husband of an unwilling
consort, who in her turn loved a famous poet. But it is this Stuart,
after all, of whom we think when we hear the bagpipes skirling "Over the
Water to Charlie" or "Wha'll be King but Charlie? "

END OF VOLUME ONE





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,
leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day
or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of
the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her
half-idiot husband.

When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could
be heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathic
perversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute and
repulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him with
horror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloated
face, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose
and distended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She was
scarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize upon him
and he would declare himself her slave, attending her at court functions
in the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotion for his
bride.

Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a long
time to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments she
would plead with him and strive to interest him in something better
than his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was incorrigible.
Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling, these never
lasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into the most frantic
excesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.

It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good sense
showed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She therefore
gradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of doing
those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.

She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter the
Great none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried to
force upon the Russian people various forms of western civilization
which were alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had striven
to make his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.
Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remain
Russian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirred
always by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was their
own. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired the
Russian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russian
costume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown of
green, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered with
diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as were
gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor of
the common people.

It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman,
escaped the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. The
infidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothing
as his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of character
and of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which the
average Russian had no conception; and therefore it is not strange that
Catharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned to
some of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the half
imbecile to whom she had been married.

Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,
though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should judge
very gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life whence
all the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several children before
her thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubt exists as
to their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were two whose courage
and virility specially attracted her. The one with whom her name has
been most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and his brother, Alexis
Orloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful in frame, suave in
manner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocity slumbering
underneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it was currently
declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.

When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,
after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways his
elevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like those
which had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians have
given him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with his
name; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about is
rather ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers, and
had remained for several days drinking and carousing until he scarcely
knew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named Gudovitch,
who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into the
banquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with indignation.
Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of a battle
trumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.

"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who
really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories
of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take
as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will be
changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth.
Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have given you
so loyally! "

With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand two
proclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which had
become an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring to
the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.

The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the brain
of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading them,
hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that they
expressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg, and
great was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted only
as any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger will than
his.

As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of
the wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy of
his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything that
was German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thus exciting
the jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German fashions. He
boasted that his father had been an officer in the Prussian army. His
crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge of
sycophancy.

As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. He
declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was
really fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned
to Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly
forgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her high
spirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; and
at last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the Countess
Vorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.

It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her
personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense.
She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the ground
of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to make
complaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad. If he
questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take measures to
imprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore she conferred with
the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developed
into a conspiracy.

The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.
But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early
one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.

"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed! "

Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out
the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they
clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately
afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son; but
as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by the
soldiers, as empress in her own right.

It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from
the capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt
would not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to
Ropsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs, quite
of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive
poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now
quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized
him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till the
blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate man was
dead.

Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save
to accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the foreign
ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic. When
his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to have
oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had been
placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and some six
years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure. The
whole incident was characteristically Russian.

It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of
Catharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her
statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, and
the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet these
things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the woman
whom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North.