The most famous of these rumors is that she died after having sex with her horse. Eight days later, the dethroned tsar was dead, killed under still-uncertain circumstances alternatively characterized as murder, the inadvertent result of a drunken brawl and a total accident. [134] An autopsy confirmed a stroke as the cause of death. These differences led both parties to seek intimacy elsewhere, a fact that raised questions, both at the time and in the centuries since, about the paternity of their son, the future Paul I. Catherine herself suggested in her memoirs that Paul was the child of her first lover, Sergei Saltykov. A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vige Le Brun's memoirs. It was unthinkable they could rule a nation, especially one successfully. [d] As a patron of the arts, she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, including the establishment of the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe. She came to power following the overthrow of her husband, Peter III. Though Russia never officially adopted the Nakaz, the widely distributed 526-article treatise still managed to cement the empress reputation as an enlightened European ruler. Jaques cites a Vigilius Ericksen portrait of the empress as emblematic of Catherines many contradictions. Later uprisings in Poland led to the third partition in 1795. Russia was to stop any involvement in internal affairs of Sweden. The plan was another attempt to force nomadic people to settle. But the actual story of the monarch's death is far simpler: On November 16, 1796, the 67-year-old empress . [46], Nicholas I, her grandson, evaluated the foreign policy of Catherine the Great as a dishonest one. Catherine The Great death: She was the victim of many slurs (Image: SKY/HBO) Trending There were a number of salacious tales surrounding the monarch and her court, which was something that . Army officer Grigory Potemkin was arguably the greatest love of Catherines life, though her relationship with Grigory Orlov, who helped the empress overthrow Peter III, technically lasted longer. Catherine saw Orlov as very useful, and he became instrumental in the 28 June 1762 coup d'tat against her husband, but she preferred to remain the dowager empress of Russia rather than marrying anyone. She avoided force and tried persuasion (and money) to integrate Muslim areas into her empire. Womens History Month facts: When is Women's History Month? Those who opposed her were men. Catherine never even mentioned her daughter's death in her memoirs. Advertising Notice Born without a drop of Russian blood inside her veins, the German-born Sophie Friederike Auguste died as Catherine the Great of Russia, whose successful 34-year reign became known as the Golden Age of Russia. No evidence conclusively linking Catherine to her husbands death exists, but as many historians have pointed out, his demise benefitted her immensely. It was instituted by the Fundamental Law of 7 November 1775. How can history remember her for anything else if she died whilst trying to have sexual intercourse with a horse? She refused the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp which had ports on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, and refrained from having a Russian army in Germany. Several bank branches were afterwards established in other towns, called government towns. An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernise Russia along Western European lines. She appointed General Aleksandr Bibikov to put down the uprising, but she needed Potemkin's advice on military strategy. Its surprising that someone whos waging war with the Ottoman Empire and partitioning Poland and annexing the Crimea has time to make sketches for one of her palaces, but she was very hands on, says Jaques. However, because her second cousin Peter III converted to Orthodox Christianity, her mother's brother became the heir to the Swedish throne[4] and two of her first cousins, Gustav III and Charles XIII, later became Kings of Sweden. Inspired by Byzantine design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the eastern and western Roman empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop. Instead she pioneered for Russia the role that Britain later played through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries as an international mediator in disputes that could, or did, lead to war. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission almost a consultative parliament composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. Catherine led a successful bloodless coup and put herself on the throne in his stead. Catherine the Great, Russian Yekaterina Velikaya, also called Catherine II, Russian in full Yekaterina Alekseyevna, original name Sophie Friederike Auguste, Prinzessin von Anhalt-Zerbst, (born April 21 [May 2, New Style], 1729, Stettin, Prussia [now Szczecin, Poland]died November 6 [November 17], 1796, Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], near St. Petersburg, Russia), German-born empress of Russia . Catherine tried to keep the Jews away from certain economic spheres, even under the guise of equality; in 1790, she banned Jewish citizens from Moscow's middle class.[112]. From 1788 to 1790, Russia fought a war against Sweden, a conflict instigated by Catherine's cousin, King Gustav III of Sweden, who expected to overrun the Russian armies still engaged in war against the Ottoman Turks, and hoped to strike Saint Petersburg directly. For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs. [70] In a letter to Voltaire in 1772, she wrote: "Right now I adore English gardens, curves, gentle slopes, ponds in the form of lakes, archipelagos on dry land, and I have a profound scorn for straight lines, symmetric avenues. The global trade of Russian natural resources and Russian grain provoked famines, starvation and fear of famines in Russia. In 1774, a disillusioned military officer named Yemelyan Pugachev capitalized on the unrest fomented by Russias ongoing fight with Turkey to lead hundreds of thousands into rebellion. Gavrila Derzhavin, Denis Fonvizin and Ippolit Bogdanovich laid the groundwork for the great writers of the 19th century, especially for Alexander Pushkin. Catherine was worried that Potemkin's poor health would delay his important work in colonising and developing the south as he had planned. [102], In 1762, to help mend the rift between the Orthodox church and a sect that called themselves the Old Believers, Catherine passed an act that allowed Old Believers to practise their faith openly without interference. The next day, she left the palace and departed for the Ismailovsky Regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. [30], Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 17631781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of her reign. In addition to collecting art, Catherine commissioned an array of new cultural projects, including an imposing bronze monument to Peter the Great, Russias first state library, exact replicas of Raphaels Vatican City loggias and palatial neoclassical buildings constructed across St. Petersburg. Firstly I was very surprised at her small stature; I had imagined her to be very tall, as great as her fame. They were pressured into Orthodoxy through monetary incentives. The couples loveless marriage afforded Catherine ample opportunity to pursue her intellectual interests, from reading the work of Enlightenment thinkers to perfecting her grasp of Russian. Another theory argues that he died through injuries sustained from . She fell into a coma and died the next day whilst lying in her bed. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. After the rebels, their French and European volunteers, and their allied Ottoman Empire had been defeated, she established in the Commonwealth a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council, under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys. [89] In 1764, she sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational commission. Briefwechsel mit der Kaiserin Katharina", "Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible", "The Ambiguous Legal Status of Russian Jewry in the Reign of Catherine II", "Catherine II and the Serfs: A Reconsideration of Some Problems", Bibliography of Russian history (16131917), Some of the code of laws mentioned above, along with other information, Manifesto of the Empress Catherine II, inviting foreign immigration, Biography of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, Family tree of the ancestors of Catherine the Great, Diaries and Letters: Catherine II German Princess Who Came to Rule Russia, Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Lneburg, Catherine Alexeievna (Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst), Natalia Alexeievna (Wilhelmina Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt), Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Wrttemberg), Anna Feodorovna (Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld), Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia), Elena Pavlovna (Charlotte of Wrttemberg), Alexandra Iosifovna (Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg), Maria Pavlovna (Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin), Elizabeth Feodorovna (Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine), Alexandra Georgievna (Alexandra of Greece and Denmark), Elizaveta Mavrikievna (Elisabeth of Saxe-Altenburg), Anastasia Nikolaevna (Anastasia of Montenegro), Militza Nikolaevna of Montenegro (Milica of Montenegro), Maria Georgievna (Maria of Greece and Denmark), Viktoria Feodorovna (Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catherine_the_Great&oldid=1142635143, 18th-century people from the Russian Empire, 18th-century women from the Russian Empire, Burials at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Lutheranism, Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Mistresses of Stanisaw August Poniatowski, People of the War of the Bavarian Succession, Recipients of the Order of St. George of the First Degree, Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland), Articles containing Russian-language text, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2020, Articles lacking reliable references from November 2018, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Articles lacking in-text citations from July 2022, Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2008, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2009, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from August 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from April 2022, Articles needing additional references from December 2022, Articles with Russian-language sources (ru), Articles with self-published sources from November 2021, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the New International Encyclopedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, According to court gossip, this lost pregnancy was attributed to. Four years later, in 1766, she endeavoured to embody in legislation the principles of Enlightenment she learned from studying the French philosophers. CATHERINE THE GREAT was Russia's longest ruling female leader after she succeeded her husband in the 18th century. Russia's State Council in 1770 announced a policy in favour of eventual Crimean independence. Construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the empress, changed the face of the country. The following year, the 16-year-old wed her betrothed, officially becoming Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna. Those in a position to smear her reputation were men. Poniatowski, through his mother's side, came from the Czartoryski family, prominent members of the pro-Russian faction in Poland; Poniatowski and Catherine were eighth cousins, twice removed, by their mutual ancestor King Christian I of Denmark, by virtue of Poniatowski's maternal descent from the Scottish House of Stuart. Catherine's undated will, discovered in early 1792 among her papers by her secretary Alexander Vasilievich Khrapovitsky, gave specific instructions should she die: "Lay out my corpse dressed in white, with a golden crown on my head, and on it inscribe my Christian name. As Robert K. Massie writes in Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, [F]rom the beginning of her husbands reign, her position was one of isolation and humiliation. Further compounding these unpopular decisions were his attempted repudiation of his wife in favor of his mistress and his seizure of church lands under the guise of secularization. Catherine named ahin Giray, a Crimean Tatar leader, to head the Crimean state and maintain friendly relations with Russia. [115] She closed 569 of 954 monasteries, of which only 161 received government money. M. B. W. Trent, "Catherine the Great Invites Euler to Return to St. On the morning of 5 November 1796 . She found that piecemeal reform worked poorly because there was no overall view of a comprehensive state budget. When Catherine agreed to the First Partition of Poland, the large new Jewish element was treated as a separate people, defined by their religion. Based on her writings, she found Peter detestable upon meeting him. [52], Catherine paid a great deal of attention to financial reform, and relied heavily on the advice of Prince A. Peter and Catherine had both been involved in a 1749 Russian military plot to crown Peter (together with Catherine) in Elizabeth's stead. Catherine completed the conquest of the south, making Russia the dominant power in the Balkans after the Russo-Turkish War of 17681774. [citation needed] Catherine chose to assimilate Islam into the state rather than eliminate it when public outcry became too disruptive. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F.G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. Peter also still played with toy soldiers. 12. pp. [101], Catherine's apparent embrace of all things Russian (including Orthodoxy) may have prompted her personal indifference to religion. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split 52,000km2 (20,000sqmi) among them. They introduced numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing. Many cities and towns were founded on Catherine's orders in the newly conquered lands, most notably Odessa, Yekaterinoslav (to-day known as Dnipro), Kherson, Nikolayev, and Sevastopol. Taxes doubled again for those of Jewish descent in 1794, and Catherine officially declared that Jews bore no relation to Russians. [133] The court physician diagnosed a stroke[133][134] and despite attempts to revive her, she fell into a coma. A great dreamer, he was avid for territories to conquer and provinces to populate; an experienced diplomat with a knowledge of Russia that Catherine had not yet acquired and as audacious as Catherine was methodical, Potemkin was treated as an equal by the empress up to the time of his death in 1791. The bridegroom, known as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of present-day[update] Germany near the border with Denmark) in 1739. Finally, it was the Annals by Tacitus that caused what she called a "revolution" in her teenage mind as Tacitus was the first intellectual she read who understood power politics as they are, not as they should be. [109][110], In an attempt to assimilate the Jews into Russia's economy, Catherine included them under the rights and laws of the Charter of the Towns of 1782. The cause of death was confirmed by autopsy. Catherine II (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 - 17 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. While the deeply entrenched system of Russian serfdomin which peasants were enslaved by and freely traded among feudal lordswas at odds with her philosophical values, Catherine recognized that her main base of support was the nobility, which derived its wealth from feudalism and was therefore unlikely to take kindly to these laborers emancipation. Closer to home, her success, coupled with how she came to power, led to jealously and fear among her male objectors in the Russian court. ]]> the official cause of death was given as haemorrhoids and Catherine never . According to her memoirs, Sophie was regarded as a tomboy, and trained herself to master a sword. At first, the institute only admitted young girls of the noble elite, but eventually it began to admit girls of the petit-bourgeoisie as well. [8] The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, with a concentration upon learning the etiquette expected of a lady, French, and Lutheran theology. This raised her in the empress's esteem. Catherine's death is well documented. [83][84], Catherine also received Elisabeth Vige Le Brun at her Tsarskoye Selo residence in St Petersburg, by whom she was painted shortly before her death. Although the idea of partitioning Poland came from the King Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine took a leading role in carrying it out in the 1790s. McNamara tells the Sydney Morning Herald that this apocryphal anecdote helped inspire The Great., It seemed like her life had been reduced to a salacious headline about having sex with a horse, the writer says. Catherine was born in Stettin, Province of Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia, Holy Roman Empire, as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. Biography 27 (2004), 51734. A poor student who felt a stronger allegiance to his home country of Prussia than Russia, the heir spent much of his time indulging in various vicesand unsuccessfully working to paint himself as an effective military commander. [49], Catherine imposed a comprehensive system of state regulation of merchants' activities. [38], By mid-June 1796, Zubov's troops overran without any resistance most of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan, including three principal citiesBaku, Shemakha, and Ganja. Although she mastered the language, she retained an accent. Whereas the premium cable series traced the trajectory of Catherines rule from 1764 to her death, The Great centers on her 1762 coup and the sequence of events leading up to it. Hulus The Great offers an irreverent, ahistorical take on the Russian empress life. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility. Is there any truth to this infamous story of bestiality? Did you know that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women, causing 1 in 3 deaths every year? Decent Essays. [128], Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the British ambassador to Russia, offered Stanislaus Poniatowski a place in the embassy in return for gaining Catherine as an ally. But whereas she downplayed this background in favor of presenting herself as a Russian patriot, he catered to his home country by abandoning conquests against Prussia and pursuing a military campaign in Denmark that was of little value to Russia. The Corps then began to take children from a very young age and educate them until the age of 21, with a broadened curriculum that included the sciences, philosophy, ethics, history, and international law. Catherine was a patron of the arts, literature, and education. "The circumstances and cause of death, and the intentions and degree of responsibility of those involved can never be known," wrote Robert K. Massie in his seminal biography, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. in, Inna Gorbatov, "Voltaire and Russia in the Age of Enlightenment.". Catherine had been targeted for being unmarried.[137]. Old Believers were allowed to hold elected municipal positions after the Urban Charter of 1785, and she promised religious freedom to those who wished to settle in Russia. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Her male enemies created the legends that still reverberate around todays World Wide Web. [68] Pugachev had made stories about himself acting as a real emperor should, helping the common people, listening to their problems, praying for them, and generally acting saintly, and this helped rally the peasants and serfs, with their very conservative values, to his cause. Catherine then sought to have inoculations throughout her empire and stated: "My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger". Elizabeth therefore allowed Catherine to have sexual lovers only after a new legal heir, Catherine and Peter's son, survived and appeared to be strong.[16]. [125] Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards them, even after the affair ended. Declaring, Didnt I tell you she was capable of anything? Peter proceeded to weep and drink and dither.. These reforms in the Cadet Corps influenced the curricula of the Naval Cadet Corps and the Engineering and Artillery Schools. Her death led people to create a lot of rumors. ", Madame Vige Le Brun also describes the empress at a gala:[85]. Several years into her reign, Catherine embarked on an ambitious legal endeavor inspired byand partially plagiarized fromthe writings of leading thinkers. Mourning dress is to be worn for six months, and no longer: the shorter the better. In 1767, Catherine decreed that after seven years in one rank, civil servants automatically would be promoted regardless of office or merit. Sophie had turned 16. In the plus column, the longest-reigning empress of Russia transformed her empire into one of Europe's great and . [36][37], It was widely expected that a 13,000-strong Russian corps would be led by the seasoned general, Ivan Gudovich, but the empress followed the advice of her lover, Prince Zubov, and entrusted the command to his youthful brother, Count Valerian Zubov. This commission was charged with organising a national school network, as well as providing teacher training and textbooks. Catherines failure to abolish feudalism is often cited as justification for characterizing her as a hypocritical, albeit enlightened, despot. In addition to the textbooks translated by the commission, teachers were provided with the "Guide to Teachers". Society stated that her role should just have been to provide Peter III with a male heir, instead she overthrew her clueless husband and claimed the throne for herself. In the same year, Catherine issued the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. The life of a serf belonged to the state. [95], From 1768 to 1774, no progress was made in setting up a national school system. She transformed the clergy from a group that wielded great power over the Russian government and its people to a segregated community forced to depend on the state for compensation. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova (17531775) was another potential rival. After the "Toleration of All Faiths" Edict of 1773, Muslims were permitted to build mosques and practise all of their traditions, the most obvious of these being the pilgrimage to Mecca, which previously had been denied. This war was another catastrophe for the Ottomans, ending with the Treaty of Jassy (1792), which legitimised the Russian claim to the Crimea and granted the Yedisan region to Russia.