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In his 1647 book Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise (Description of the Muscovite and Persian journey), German scholar Adam Olearius[136] Olearius's claims about a supposed Russian tendency towards bestiality with horses was often repeated in anti-Russian literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to illustrate the alleged barbarous "Asian" nature of Russia. Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the partitions of Poland. Wikimedia Commons. Finally Catherine annexed the Crimea in 1783. Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp (24 October 1712 - 30 May 1760) was a member of the German House of Holstein-Gottorp, a princess consort of Anhalt-Zerbst by marriage, and the regent of Anhalt-Zerbst from 1747 to 1752 on behalf of her minor son, Frederick Augustus.She is best known as the mother of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. The emergence of these assignation roubles was necessary due to large government spending on military needs, which led to a shortage of silver in the treasury (transactions, especially in foreign trade, were conducted almost exclusively in silver and gold coins). document.write(new Date().getFullYear()) If you feel unhappy, raise yourself above unhappiness, and so act that your happiness may be independent of all eventualities.[21]. In 1772, Catherine's close friends informed her of Orlov's affairs with other women, and she dismissed him. Catherine, 26 years old and already married to the then-Grand Duke Peter for some 10 years, met the 22-year-old Poniatowski in 1755, therefore well before encountering the Orlov brothers. Posterity will never forgive me., Contrary to Catherines dire prediction, Peters death, while casting a pall over her rule, did not completely overshadow her legacy. [90] However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. Catherine was stretched on a ceremonial bed surrounded by the coats of arms of all the towns in Russia. By 1759, he and Catherine had become lovers; no one told Catherine's husband, the Grand Duke Peter. Her son Pavel later was inoculated as well. The Ottomans restarted hostilities in the Russo-Turkish War of 17871792. 12. pp. There's no question Catherine was behind the coup that led to her husband's overthrow and her eventual coronation as Empress Yekaterina Alekseyevna Romanova, aka Catherine II. Hulu's new series, The Great, follows Catherine the Great and her husband Peter III of Russia, who died under mysterious circumstances after his brief ascent to . Nobles in each district elected a Marshal of the Nobility, who spoke on their behalf to the monarch on issues of concern to them, mainly economic ones. Russia was to stop any involvement in internal affairs of Sweden. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split 52,000km2 (20,000sqmi) among them. Although Catherine did not descend from the Romanov dynasty, her ancestors included members of the Rurik dynasty, which preceded the Romanovs. The future Peter III was born Karl Peter Ulrich in 1728, in Kiel, Germany. Catherine began issuing codes to address some of the modernisation trends suggested in her Nakaz. The statute sought to efficiently govern Russia by increasing population and dividing the country into provinces and districts. She came from a very poor family and did not have a pleasant childhood. She was especially impressed with his argument that people do not act for their professed idealistic reasons, and instead she learned to look for the "hidden and interested motives". Some claimed Catherine failed to supply enough money to support her educational program. ; in a word, Anglomania is the master of my plantomania". The endowments were often much less than the original intended amount. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before. [78] In the third category fell the work of Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, Ferdinando Galiani, Nicolas Baudeau, and Sir William Blackstone. "Despot" is not derogatory in this context. Her goal was to modernise education across Russia. She came to power following the overthrow of her husband, Peter III. Catherine believed education could change the hearts and minds of the Russian people and turn them away from backwardness. She thus spent much of this time alone in her private boudoir to hide away from Peter's abrasive personality. the official cause of death was given as haemorrhoids and Catherine never . In many ways, the Orthodox Church fared no better than its foreign counterparts during the reign of Catherine. In July 1765, Dumaresq wrote to Dr. John Brown about the commission's problems and received a long reply containing very general and sweeping suggestions for education and social reforms in Russia. [153], Empress Catherine's correspondence with Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Wrttemberg, (the father of Catherine's daughter-in-law Maria Feodorovna) written between 1768 and 1795, is preserved in the State Archive of Stuttgart (Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart) in Stuttgart, Germany.[154]. Catherine's eldest sonand heirmay have been illegitimate. Still, there was a start of industry, mainly textiles around Moscow and ironworks in the Ural Mountains, with a labour force mainly of serfs, bound to the works. 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. Vaizemski's Office of State Revenue took centralised control and by 1781, the government possessed its first approximation of a state budget. The official cause of death was advertised as hemorrhoidal colican absurd diagnosis that soon became a popular euphemism for assassination, according to Montefiore. 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.. [104] Between 1762 and 1773, Muslims were prohibited from owning any Orthodox serfs. It was unthinkable they could rule a nation, especially one successfully. Privacy Statement He was strongly in favour of the adoption of the Austrian three-tier model of trivial, real, and normal schools at the village, town, and provincial capital levels. When Catherine agreed to the First Partition of Poland, the large new Jewish element was treated as a separate people, defined by their religion. In the south the Crimean Khanate was crushed following victories over the Bar Confederation and Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War. Her father did not travel to Russia for the wedding. Her male enemies created the legends that still reverberate around todays World Wide Web. [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"). The palace of the Crimean Khanate passed into the hands of the Russians. Cookie Settings, Photo illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Hulu and Getty Images, Photo by Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images, Ad Meskens via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0, Godot13 via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0. [citation needed] She bore him a daughter named Anna Petrovna in December 1757 (not to be confused with Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, the daughter of Peter I's second marriage), although she was legally regarded as Grand Duke Peter's.[129]. [73] Between 1762 and 1766, she had built the "Chinese Palace" at Oranienbaum which reflected the chinoiserie style of architecture and gardening. She did not allow dissenters to build chapels, and she suppressed religious dissent after the onset of the French Revolution. Taxes doubled again for those of Jewish descent in 1794, and Catherine officially declared that Jews bore no relation to Russians. Russia invaded Poland on 26 August 1764, threatening to fight, and imposing Poniatowski as king. While the nobility provided appreciable amounts of money for these institutions, they preferred to send their own children to private, prestigious institutions. The commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. Catherine's decree also denied Jews the rights of an Orthodox or naturalised citizen of Russia. The bonnet which held her white hair was not decorated with ribbons, but with the most beautiful diamonds. 2. While the measure appeared to be progressive on paper, the reality of the situation remained stark for most peasants, and in 1881, revolutionaries assassinated the increasingly reactionary czara clear example of what Hartley deems autocracy tempered by assassination, or the idea that a ruler had almost unlimited powers but was always vulnerable to being dethroned if he or she alienated the elites., After Pugachevs uprising, Catherine shifted focus to what Massie describes as more readily achievable aims: namely, the expansion of her empire and the enrichment of its culture.. Sophie recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in Russia, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. The emperor's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. Her coffee was brought in, she drank it and sat down to write. That same morning, two of the Orlov brothers arrested Peter and forced him to sign a statement of abdication. [115], Catherine, throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions for as long as they held her interest and then pensioning them off with gifts of serfs and large estates. It was instituted by the Fundamental Law of 7 November 1775. Death and succession. But there is no truth in that story. No evidence conclusively linking Catherine to her husbands death exists, but as many historians have pointed out, his demise benefitted her immensely. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. Uniting Cossacks, peasants, escaped serfs and other discontented tribal groups and malcontents, Pugachev produced a storm of violence that swept across the steppes, writes Massie. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Assisted by highly successful generals such as Alexander Suvorov and Pyotr Rumyantsev, and admirals such as Samuel Greig and Fyodor Ushakov, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. The most famous of these rumors is that she died after having sex with her horse. Two wings were devoted to her collections of "curiosities". I hate fountains that torture water in order to make it take a course contrary to its nature: Statues are relegated to galleries, vestibules etc. [132], On 16 November[O.S. Petersburg." While a significant improvement, it was only a minuscule number, compared to the size of the Russian population. The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books. She applied herself to learning the Russian language with zeal, rising at night and walking about her bedroom barefoot, repeating her lessons. 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. [124], After her affair with her lover and adviser Grigory Potemkin ended in 1776, he allegedly selected a candidate-lover for her who had the physical beauty and mental faculties to hold her interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and Nicholas Alexander Suk). But Russia's Baltic Fleet checked the Royal Swedish navy in the tied Battle of Hogland (July 1788), and the Swedish army failed to advance. In addition to the textbooks translated by the commission, teachers were provided with the "Guide to Teachers". Biography 27 (2004), 51734. 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. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of roubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland and Sweden, to counter the power of the BourbonHabsburg League. Upon arriving in St. Petersburg in 1744, Sophie converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, adopted a Russian name and began learning to speak the language. The attitude of the serfs toward their autocrat had historically been a positive one. 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. when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.[127]. Catherine wanted to become an empress herself and did not want another heir to the throne; however, Empress Elizabeth blackmailed Peter and Catherine to produce this heir. 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. Catherine never even mentioned her daughter's death in her memoirs. Tuberculosis, diagnosed as an abscess of the lungs, caused her early demise. So far, she's the woman who's ruled Russia the longest 34 years on the throne. //-->