shake off the yoke of Menshikov and to liberate Peter II from a
humiliating guardianship.
Alas! June 1, 1727, the young bishop Charles Augustus was
carried off by smallplox. Overnight, Elizabeth found herself with
no suitor, no more marital hopes. After Louis XV balked, she now
had lost another pretender — less prestigious, certainly, than the
King of France, but a very honorable match for a Russian grand
duchess. Really, fate seemed dead set against her dreams of mar-
riage. She lost heart, took a strong dislike to the court of St. Pe-
tersburg and withdrew, with her putative brother-in-law Charles
Frederick and her sister Anna, to the palace of Ekaterinhof, at the
edge of St. Petersburg, under the shade trees of an immense park
surrounded by canals. In this idyllic setting, she relied very much
upon the affection of her close relations to help her ease her disap-
pointment.
The very same day of their departure, Menshikov gave an
extravagant feast at his palace in honor of the betrothal of his
elder daughter, Maria, to the young Tsar Peter II. The intended,
bedecked and bejeweled like a gilded coffer, received on this occa-
sion the title of Her Most Serene Highness and the guarantee of an
annual income of 34,000 rubles from the State Treasury. More
parsimonious when it came to compensating the Tsarevna2 Eliza-
beth, Menshikov only allocated 12,000 rubles to her to assuage the
rigor of her mourning.3 But Elizabeth wanted to be seen by one
and all as an inconsolable fiancée. The fact that she was not yet
married (by the age of 18), and that only the most ambitious
seemed interested in her — and only out of political considera-
tions — was too cruel a fate to be swallowed anytime soon. For-
tunately, her friends immediately set about finding a high-quality
substitute for Charles Augustus, in Russia or abroad. The dear
departed’s coffin had hardly been laid in the ground in Lübeck
when the possible candidature of Charles Adolf of Holstein was
< 37 >
suggested — the proper brother of the departed — and also that
of Count Maurice of Saxony and several other gentlemen of easily
verifiable merits.
While Elizabeth, at Ekaterinhof, was dreaming over these
various parties, whose faces she barely recognized, in the heart of
St. Petersburg Menshikov, as ever a practical man, was studying
the available bachelors’ relative advantages. In his eyes, the half-
widowed tsarina represented an excellent bargaining chip in the
diplomatic negotiations that were underway. But these matrimo-
nial concerns did not make him lose sight of the education of his
imperial pupil. Observing that Peter seemed to have become
slightly less extravagant recently, he recommended to Ostermann
that he step up his struggle against his pupil’s natural idleness by
accustoming him to fixed hours, whether they be spent in study
or recreation. The Westphalian was assisted in this task by
Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky, the “assistant governor”; he
often visited the palace with his young son, Prince Ivan, a beauti-
ful, hot-blooded young man of 20 years, elegant and effeminate,
who amused His Majesty with his inexhaustible chattering.
Upon her return from Ekaterinhof, where she had spent a
few weeks in sentimental retirement, Elizabeth installed herself at
the Summer Palace; but not a day went by that she did not pay a
visit, with her sister Anna, to her dear nephew in his gilded cage.
They would listen to the confidences of the spoiled child, share
his passion for Ivan Dolgoruky — that irresistibly handsome
young man — and keep them both company in their nightly rev-
els. Despite the remonstrances of their male chaperons, a wind of
madness blew through this shameless quartet. In December 1727,
Johann Lefort brought the minister at the court of Saxony up to
date on young Peter’s escapades. “The master [Peter II] has no
other occupation but to run in the streets, day and night, with the
princess Elizabeth and her sister, to visit the chamberlain Ivan
< 38 >
[Dolgoruky], the pages, the cooks and God knows whom else.”
Hinting that the sovereign under supervision had unnatural tastes
and that the delightful Ivan was inciting him in forbidden pleas-
ures instead of curbing his inclinations, Lefort continued: “One
could almost believe that these misguided people [the Dolgoru-
kys] are encouraging the various vices by fostering [in the Tsar]
the sins of the Russia of the past. I know an apartment contigu-
ous to the billiard parlor where the deputy governor [Prince
Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky] hosts pleasure parties for him. . .
they don’t go to bed until 7:00AM.”4
That these young people should satiate their appetites in
such entertainment suited Menshikov just fine. As long as Peter
and his aunts continued to dope themselves in love intrigues and
casual affairs, their political influence would be nil. On the other
hand, the “Most Serene One” feared that Duke Charles Frederick
