Peter the Great (116 page)

Peter's decision caused a diplomatic storm. Abandonment of the expedition seemed to confirm the worst suspicions of his allies. Cleverly, Peter had brought 29,000 Russian soldiers to Copenhagen not to invade Sweden but to occupy Denmark, seize Wismar and dictate the politics of North Germany. Frederick IV of Denmark was apprehensive about the numerous Russian regiments camped in the suburbs of his capital; he was also angry that

Peter's sudden decision had robbed him of certain victory over Sweden. The English were worried about the effect a powerful Russian army and fleet stationed at the entrance to the Baltic would have on English trade in that sea. But it was the Hanoverians who were most violently distressed by this Russian "plot." Bernstorff, their chief minister, went to see the English General Stanhope, who was then in Hanover with King George I, and hysterically proposed that English "crush the Tsar immediately and secure his ships, even seize his person" as a means of ensuring that all Russian troops would evacuate Denmark and Germany. Stanhope refused, and Bernstorff thereupon sent an order directly to Admiral Norris at Copenhagen to seize the Tsar and the Russian ships. Norris prudently refused also, saying that he took orders from the government of England, not of Hanover.

While all these accusations flew behind his back, Peter remained at Copenhagen, where he continued to be honored by the Danes. The Tsar was especially pleased by the treatment accorded Catherine. She was accepted as his wife and Tsaritsa, and in acknowledgement of her rank, the Queen of Denmark paid a formal call to welcome her to the capital. Admiral Norris was respectful and amiable to his fellow admiral, the Tsar. On the anniversary of the Battle of Lesnaya, the victory for which Peter had taken personal credit, all the ships of the English squadron thundered a salute.

In fact, the suspicions of the Tsar's allies were groundless. Peter's intention had been to invade Sweden in order to end the war. When the invasion attempt seemed too risky, he canceled it, but immediately he began looking for another means to achieve his purpose. As early as October 13, he had written to the Senate in St. Petersburg, explaining what he had done and declaring that the only possibility remaining would be to at
t
ack the Swedish homeland from a different direction: across the Gulf of Bothnia from the Aland Islands. He ordered such an attack prepared. As for the threat to Denmark and Hanover, it melted away even as Bernstorff was proclaiming doom. The Russian battalions quietly returned to Mecklenburg and thence—with the exception of a small force of infantry and one cavalry regiment—to Poland. The Russian fleet sailed north for its winter harbors, Riga, Reval and Kronstadt. On October 15, Peter and Catherine also left the Danish capital, traveling slowly through Holstein to meet King Frederick William of Prussia at Havelsberg.

Frederick William disliked Hanover, although both his wife and his mother were Hanoverian princesses. When Bernstorff accused the R
ussians of wishing to occupy Lu
beck, Hamburg and Wismar, Frederick William stood by Peter. "The Tsar has given his word

that he will take nothing for himself from the empire," the Prussian King pointed out. "Besides, part of his cavalry is marching toward Poland, and it would be impossible for him to take those three cities without artillery which he does not possess." To a report from his own minister, Ilgen, on the Hanoverian insinuations, the King replied, "Tomfoolery! I shall refuse and sit fast by brother Peter." Not surprisingly in view of Frederick William's attitude, the Tsar's meeting with the King went well. As tokens of friendship, the two monarchs exchanged gifts: Peter promised more Russian giants for the Potsdam Grenadiers, while Frederick William presented the Tsar with a yacht and a priceless amber cabinet.

It was winter in Northern Europe. Darkness came early, the air had a chilling edge, the roads were hardening into ruts. Soon, snow would cover everything. Catherine was in advanced pregnancy and the long journey back to St. Petersburg would not be easy. Peter decided, accordingly, not to return to Russia for the winter, but to travel farther westward and pass the coldest months in Amsterdam, which he had not seen for eighteen years. Leaving Catherine to follow more slowly, he traveled through Hamburg, Bremen, Amersfoort and Utrecht, arriving in Amsterdam on December 6. Even on these relatively well-traveled roads, conditions were primitive. Peter wrote to warn Catherine:

What I have written before I now confirm, not to come by the way which I came, for it is indescribably bad. Do not bring many ' people, for life in Holland has become very expensive. As to the church singers, if they have not already started, half of them will be enough. Leave the rest in Mecklenburg. All who are with me here sympathize with you about your journey. If you can endure it, you had better stay where you are, for the bad roads may be dangerous to you. However, do as you please, and for God's sake do not think that I do not want you to come, for you know yourself how much I wish it, and it is better for you to come than to be lonely and sad. Still, I could not desist from writing and I know that you will not endure being left alone.

Catherine started, but after a difficult journey she was forced to halt at Wesel, near the Dutch frontier. Here, on January 2, 1717, she gave birth to a son, whom they had agreed should be called Paul. The Tsar, who was once again lying in bed with a six-week bout of fever, wrote to her enthusiastically:

I received yesterday your delightful letter in which you say that the Lord God has blessed us by giving us another recruit
...
for
which praise be to him and unforgetting thanks. It delighted me doubly, first about the newborn child, and that the Lord God has freed you from your pains, from which also I became better. Ever since Christmas I have not been able to sit up as long as yesterday. As soon as possible, I will immediately come to you.

The following day, Peter received a shock: His son was dead and his wife was very weak. Peter, who had already sent couriers to Russia to announce the birth, tried to be helpful to Catherine.

I received your letter about what I knew before, the unexpected occurrence which has changed joy to grief. What answer can I give except that of the long-suffering Job? The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord. I beg you to reflect on it in this way; I do as far as I can. My illness, thank God, lessens from hour to hour, and I hope to soon go out of the house. It is now nothing but irritation. Otherwise, I praise God I am well, and should long ago have gone to you if 1 could have gone by water, but I fear the shaking up of land traveling. Besides, I am waiting for an answer from the English King, who is expected here in these days.

Although Peter tried to cast off his unhappiness at losing a son and thought for the moment that he was getting better, little Paul's death seemed to aggravate his fever and he remained in bed for another month. Catherine found him there when she arrived in Amsterdam. Because of this illness, Peter did not meet the stolid Hanoverian who had become England's King. When George I passed through Holland to board his ship for England, Peter sent Tolstoy and Kurakin to call on him, but the Russian envoys were not received. Later, George I apologized, saying that he had been already on board the ship and had had to sail with the tide.

When he began to feel better, Peter enjoyed his stay in Holland. Catherine was with him, and he devoted himself to revisiting and showing her the places where he had been happy as a young man. He returned to Zaandam with Catherine and saw again the East India Company wharf where he had built a frigate. He journeyed to Utrecht, the Hague, Leyden and Rotterdam. And in the spring, if his plans worked out, he would at last visit Paris and see the city renowned throughout the world for its culture, its elegant society and its architectural splendor.

49

"THE KING IS A MIGHTY MAN

The
France which Peter proposed to visit in 1717 was like a vast, intricately complex system of orbiting spheres whose sun, once the source of warmth, life and meaning for the whole, was now extinct. On September 1, 1715, Louis XIV, the Sun King, died at the age of seventy-six, after a reign which had lasted seventy-two years. For thirty-five of those years, Louis' reign had run parallel to that of Peter, the other great monarch of the time. But Louis and Peter were of different generations, and as Peter's influence and Russia's power had grown, the Sun King's glory had begun to fade.

Louis' last years were blighted by domestic tragedy; his only surviving legitimate child, his heir, the colorless Grand Dauphin, who was terrified of his father, died in 1711. The new Dauphin, the dead man's son and the King's grandson, was the Due de Bourgogne, a handsome, charming, intelligent young man who embodied France's hopes for the future. His beautiful wife, Marie Adelaide of Savoy, was almost more brilliant than he. Brought as a child bride to Versailles, she grew up in the presence of the aging King, who doted on her. It was said that of all the women he had ever loved, he never loved any as much as his grandson's bride. Suddenly, in 1712, both the new Dauphin and his gay young wife were gone, dead of measles within a week of each other, he at thirty, she at twenty-seven. Their eldest son, Louis' great-grandson, became the next Dauphin. Within a few days, he died of the same disease.

There remained to the seventy-five-year-old King only one great-grandson, a pink-cheeked child of two, the last surviving infant in the direct line. He, too, had measles, but he survived the disease because his governess locked the doors and would not permit the doctors to touch him with their bleedings and emetics. This new little Dauphin remained miraculously alive and lived to rule France for fifty-nine years as Louis XV. On his deathbed, Louis XIV called for his great-grandson and heir who by then was five. Face to face, these two Bourbons who between them ruled

France for 131 years regarded each other. Then the Sun King said, "My child, you will one day be a great king. Do not imitate me in my taste for war. Always relate your actions to God and make your subjects honor Him. It breaks my heart to leave them in such a state."

On the sun King's death, Versailles was quickly deserted. The great rooms were stripped of furniture, the magnificent court was dissolved. The new King lived in the Tuileries in Paris, and sometimes strollers in the garden could see him, a chubby, pink-cheeked boy with long, curling hair, long eyelashes and a lengthening Bourbon nose.

The ruling power in France had passed into the hands of a regent—Louis XIV's nephew, Philippe, Due d'Orleans, who was the First Prince of the Blood and the direct heir to the throne after the boy King. In 1717, Philippe was forty-two, small, robust and a heroic womanizer: noblewomen, girls from the opera, girls from the street. He savored whores especially and liked to try out new girls as soon as they arrived in Paris. He cared not a whit whether the women were beautiful or ugly. His mother admitted, "He is quite crazy about women. Provided they are good-tempered, indelicate, great eaters and drinkers, he troubles little about their looks." Once when she said something to Philippe about this last point, he countered amiably, "Bah, Maman, at night all cats are gray."

The Regent's private suppers at the Palais Royal were the talk of France. Behind barricaded doors, he and his friends lay on couches and dined with women from the opera ballet who wore flimsy, transparent dresses and later danced naked. The Regent not only cared nothing for convention; he delighted in shocking it. His language at the table was so gross that his wife refused to invite anyone to dinner. He scorned religion and once brought a book by Rabelais to mass and read from it ostentatiously during the service. His wife, a daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, bore him eight children and spent most of her time locked in her room, suffering from migraines.

Under the circumstances, many in France feared for the life of the young King Louis XV. For if something happened to the boy, the Regent would become king. In fact, these fears were groundless. Philippe d'Orleans, for all his grossness, had many good qualities. He was humane and compassionate as well as sensual, and his sins did not include personal envy or ambition. He had great charm of voice and smile, and when he wished, his manners and gestures were graceful and eloquent. He was fascinated by science and art. His suite in the Palais Royal was hung with Titians and Van Dycks, and he wrote chamber music which still is played today. He was completely devoted to the small boy placed in his charge, and desired only to protect the throne until the King reached his majority. He began work at six a.m., no matter how hard he had debauched the night before. None of his co-hedonists, male or female, had the slightest effect on his decisions or policy. He saw clearly the desperate state of poverty to which his glorious uncle's martial adventures had reduced his country. During the eight years of Philippe's regency, except for a fracas with Spain, French soldiers stayed in their barracks. Philippe's foreign policy was based on peace. Even more incredible to all of Europe, the cornerstone of this new French policy was friendship with England.

Shortly before Peter's visit to Paris, the pattern of many years in Western Europe had been broken by a series of dramatic events. The fall of the Whig ministry in England had stripped Marlborough of his power, and the Anglo-Dutch invasion of northern France had ground to an inconclusive halt. The new Tory ministry was anxious for peace, and the exhausted, aging Sun King had been happy to agree. Peace was signed in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, and the great War of the Spanish Succession, which had engulfed all the kingdoms and empires of Western Europe, ended. Soon after, the Sun King himself was gone. In England, too, a royal death occurred. Queen Anne died, leaving no Protestant Stuart heir, all sixteen of her children having died in infancy or childhood. In order to ensure the Protestant succession, as agreed by Parliament in advance, the Elector of Hanover, George Louis, ascended the throne of England as King George I while retaining his rule over Hanover.