5 November]1796, Catherine rose early in the morning and had her usual morning coffee, soon settling down to work on papers; she told her lady's maid, Maria Perekusikhina, that she had slept better than she had in a long time. . If you feel unhappy, raise yourself above unhappiness, and so act that your happiness may be independent of all eventualities.[21]. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. Peter, however, supported Frederick II, eroding much of his support among the nobility. The most widely known story of Catherine the Great involves her death at age 67 in 1796. Larry Frederick died: It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Larry Frederick on Thursday, March 2, 2023. Despite his objections, on 28 June 1744, the Russian Orthodox Church received Princess Sophie as a member with the new name Catherine (Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the (artificial) patronymic (Alekseyevna, daughter of Aleksey), so that she was in all respects the namesake of Catherine I, the mother of Elizabeth and the grandmother of Peter III. The Tokugawa shogunate received the mission, but negotiations failed. The Hermitage Museum, which now[update] occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. She thus spent much of this time alone in her private boudoir to hide away from Peter's abrasive personality. Perhaps most impressively, the empressborn a virtually penniless Prussian princesswielded power for three decades despite the fact that she had no claim to the crown whatsoever. After defeating Polish loyalist forces in the PolishRussian War of 1792 and in the Kociuszko Uprising (1794), Russia completed the partitioning of Poland, dividing all of the remaining Commonwealth territory with Prussia and Austria (1795). [71] She ordered the planting of the first "English garden" at Tsarskoye Selo in May 1770. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Rumour and degrading slander became the weapon by which they would take jabs at her legacy. Peter ceased Russian operations against Prussia, and Frederick suggested the partition of Polish territories with Russia. "Did Orlov Buy the Orlov". [106], Russia often treated Judaism as a separate entity, where Jews were maintained with a separate legal and bureaucratic system. I have never been so happy. Such all-consuming passion proved unsustainablebut while the pairs romantic partnership faded after just two years, they remained on such good terms that Potemkin continued to wield enormous political influence, acting as tsar in all but name, one observer noted. The treaty also removed restrictions on Russian naval or commercial traffic in the Azov Sea, granted to Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and made the Crimea a protectorate of Russia. 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. Converted Jews could gain permission to enter the merchant class and farm as free peasants under Russian rule. [114] Endowments from the government replaced income from privately held lands. 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. Catherine had been targeted for being unmarried.[137]. 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. Catherine the Great Facts & Worksheets - School History in, Inna Gorbatov, "Voltaire and Russia in the Age of Enlightenment.". [56] The understanding of law in Imperial Russia by all sections of society was often weak, confused, or nonexistent, particularly in the provinces where most serfs lived. Non-Russian opinion of Catherine is less favourable. In their eyes, Catherine was the very definition of unnatural and so stories of outlandish sexual behaviour became a way of insinuating how her position in the world was not natural to her gender. Only 400,000 roubles of church wealth were paid back. The commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. His mother was the daughter of Russia's Peter the Great, and his father the nephew of Sweden's Charles XII. [59] Some serfs did apply for freedom and were successful. 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. )This practice was not unusual by the court standards of the day . 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 . Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.[127]. 679 Words; 3 Pages; Open Document. Several bank branches were afterwards established in other towns, called government towns. However, military conscription and the economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and of private landowners intensified the exploitation of serf labour. In addition to the textbooks translated by the commission, teachers were provided with the "Guide to Teachers". All of this was true before Catherine's reign, and this is the system she inherited. Catherine The Great: True Story Of Her Rule, Husband, Affairs Her foreign policy lacked a long-term strategy and from the very start was characterised by a series of mistakes. 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. [60] The only thing a noble could not do to his serfs was to kill them. Ruth P. Dawson, "Perilous News and Hasty Biography: Representations of Catherine II Immediately after her Seizure of the Throne." Add some worm castings if you choose. AETNUK. One claimed that she died on her toilet seat, which broke under her. On 28 June 1791, Catherine granted Daikokuya an audience at Tsarskoye Selo. [73] The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style. The rumours tell us more about the time in which Catherine lived than they do about the cause of her death. [133] Sometime after 9:00 she was found on the floor with her face purplish, her pulse weak, her breathing shallow and laboured. CATHERINE THE GREAT was Russia's longest ruling female leader after she succeeded her husband in the 18th century. A landowner could punish his serfs at his discretion, and under Catherine the Great gained the ability to sentence his serfs to hard labour in Siberia, a punishment normally reserved for convicted criminals. Malecka, Anna. [45] In a 1790 letter to Baron de Grimm written in French, she called the Qianlong Emperor "mon voisin chinois aux petits yeux" ("my Chinese neighbour with small eyes"). [78] Catherine expressed some frustration with the economists she read for what she regarded as their impractical theories, writing in the margin of one of Necker's books that if it was possible to solve all of the state's economic problems in one day, she would have done so a long time ago. March garden chores - The San Diego Union-Tribune Over this tunic she wore a red velvet dolman with very short sleeves. The attitude of the serfs toward their autocrat had historically been a positive one. Russia's State Council in 1770 announced a policy in favour of eventual Crimean independence. Their son, Aleksey Grygoriovich Bobrinsky (17621813), had one daughter, Maria Alexeyeva Bobrinsky (Bobrinskaya) (17981835), who married in 1819 the 34-year-old Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (London, England, 17841842) who took part in the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) against Napoleon, and later served as ambassador in Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Paul I of Russia was the son and successor of Catherine the Great, who took the Romanov throne away from her feeble-minded husband, Tsar Peter III, and had him killed in 1762, an event which ever afterwards preyed on the mind of their son, then a boy of eight. She recruited the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin and Anders Johan Lexell from Sweden to the Russian capital. [93], Not long after the Moscow Foundling Home, at the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoy, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded the famous Smolny Institute in 1764, first of its kind in Russia. Upon Potemkins death in 1791, Catherine reportedly spent days overwhelmed by tears and despair., In her later years, Catherine became involved with a number of significantly younger loversa fact her critics were quick to latch onto despite the countless male monarchs who did the same without attracting their subjects ire. The Treaty of Kk Kaynarca, signed 10 July 1774, gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn, and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. Perhaps the most readily recognizable anecdote related to Catherine centers on a horse. [111] Orthodox Russians disliked the inclusion of Judaism, mainly for economic reasons. Very few members of the nobility entered the church, which became even less important than it had been. [52], Catherine paid a great deal of attention to financial reform, and relied heavily on the advice of Prince A. All of this meant that the target on Catherines back was even greater. Personal life narratives. [103] Nevertheless, Catherine's Russia provided an asylum and a base for regrouping to the Jesuits following the suppression of the Jesuits in most of Europe in 1773. [47] Catherine failed to reach any of the initial goals she had put forward. Longest ruling Russian empress, 17621796, "Catherine II" redirects here. 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. The commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I.I. Catherine, for her part, claimed in her memoirs that all his actions bordered on insanity. By claiming the throne, she wrote, she had saved Russia from the disaster that all this Princes moral and physical faculties promised.. Writing for History Extra, Hartley describes Catherines Russia as an undoubtedly aggressive nation that clashed with the Ottomans, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and the Crimea in pursuit of additional territory for an already vast empire. As Simon Sebag Montefiore notes in The Romanovs: 16181918, Peter, then on holiday in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, was oblivious to his wifes actions. One urban legend even claimed that Catherine had an erotic cabinet created for one of her palaces. Catherine The Great: Who was her husband? How did he really die? Wikimedia Commons. The emperor's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. Catherine the Great was Russia's longest-serving female leader. 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. Her son Pavel later was inoculated as well. She was the second wife of Peter the Great. 'The Great' Subject Peter The III's Cause Of Death Is Still - Bustle He died at the age of 52 in 1791. If all went as planned, according to Massie, the proposed legal code would raise the levels of government administration, of justice, and of tolerance within her empire. But these changes failed to materialize, and Catherines suggestions remained just that. At first, she attempted to revise clerical studies, proposing a reform of religious schools. 7 Reasons Catherine the Great Was So Great. Look at the mirror, however, and an entirely different ruler appears: Her reflection is this private, determined, ambitious Catherine, says Jaques. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress. [135], Later, several rumours circulated regarding the cause and manner of her death. [46], Nicholas I, her grandson, evaluated the foreign policy of Catherine the Great as a dishonest one. Her Swedish cousin (once removed), King Gustav IV Adolf, visited her in September 1796, the empress's intention being that her granddaughter Alexandra should become queen of Sweden by marriage. After her death, her enemies spread gossip about her that has endured for . In the south the Crimean Khanate was crushed following victories over the Bar Confederation and Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War. For all her show of sensuality, Catherine was actually rather prudish, says Jaques. Given the frequency which this story was repeated together with Catherine's love of her adopted homeland and her love of horses, it is likely that these details were conflated into this rumor. 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. Historian Franois Cruzet writes that Russia under Catherine: had neither a free peasantry, nor a significant middle class, nor legal norms hospitable to private enterprise. 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. Peter also still played with toy soldiers. Vaizemski's Office of State Revenue took centralised control and by 1781, the government possessed its first approximation of a state budget. The leading economists of her day, such as Arthur Young and Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg in 1765. Firstly I was very surprised at her small stature; I had imagined her to be very tall, as great as her fame. Catherine the Great | Biography, Facts, Children - Britannica Though the young Prussian princess had been imported to . [73], She made a special effort to bring leading intellectuals and scientists to Russia, and she wrote her own comedies, works of fiction, and memoirs. A self-described glutton for art, the empress strategically purchased paintings in bulk, acquiring as much in 34 years as other royals took generations to amass. That is what the legend said. Publicly, Catherine evinced an air of charm, wit and self-deprecation. Catherine the Great Facts | Mental Floss The crown contains 75 pearls and 4,936 Indian diamonds forming laurel and oak leaves, the symbols of power and strength, and is surmounted by a 398.62-carat ruby spinel that previously belonged to the Empress Elizabeth, and a diamond cross. In these cases, it was necessary to replace this "fake" empress with the "true" empress, whoever she may be. When Sophie arrived in Russia in 1744, she spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with Empress Elizabeth but with her husband and with the Russian people as well.