deliberations. Learning of the decision taken by the supreme ad-
visers, Bishop Feofan Prokopovich timidly recollected the will of
Catherine I according to which, after the death of Peter II, the
crown should revert to his aunt Elizabeth, as a daughter of Peter I
and of the late empress. Never mind that the child was born be-
fore the parents were married: her mother had transmitted to her
the blood of the Romanovs, he said, and nothing else counted
when the future of Holy Russia was concerned! Dmitri Golitsyn,
indignant at such a speech, shouted, “We will not have any bas-
tards!”1
Shocked by this attack, Feofan Prokopovich swallowed his
objections; the discussion moved on to a consideration of the
“practical conditions.” The enumeration of the limits to imperial
< 66 >
power ended with an oath to be sworn by the candidate: “If I do
not keep these commitments, I agree to forfeit my crown.” Ac-
cording to the charter envisaged by the supreme council, the new
empress would commit to work to expand the Orthodox faith,
not to marry, not to designate an heir and to work closely with
the Supreme Privy Council — whose assent would be required in
order to declare war, to conclude peace, to raise taxes, to interfere
in the affairs of the nobility, to fill key positions in the administra-
tion of the empire, to distribute lands, villages, and serfs, and to
monitor her personal expenditure of State funds.
This cascade of interdicts astounded the assembly. Wasn’t
the Council going too far? Weren’t they committing a crime of
lese-majesty? Those who feared that the powers of the future em-
press were being reduced without regard for tradition ran afoul of
those who were delighted to see this reinforcement of the role of
the real boyars in the conduct of Russian political affairs. The sec-
ond group very quickly drowned out the first. Even the bishop,
overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the majority, kept his mouth
shut and ruminated over his fears, alone in a corner. Sure that
they had the entire country behind them, the Supreme Privy
Council charged Prince Vasily Lukich Dolgoruky, Prince Dmitri
Golitsyn and General Leontiev with bearing a message to Anna
Ivanovna, in her retirement at Mitau, specifying the conditions
under which she would accede to the throne.
Meanwhile, however, Elizabeth Petrovna was being kept
abreast of the discussions and the stipulations being bandied
about at the Supreme Council. Her doctor and confidant, Armand
Lestocq, warned her of the machinations going on in Moscow and
begged her “to take action.” But she refused to make the least ef-
fort to exercise her rights to the succession of Peter II. She had no
children and did not wish to have any. In her eyes, her nephew
Charles Peter Ulrich, the son of her sister Anna and Duke Charles
< 67 >
Frederick of Holstein, was the legitimate heir. But little Charles
Peter Ulrich’s mother had died, and the baby was only a few
months old. Drowning in sorrow, Elizabeth hesitated to look be-
yond this mourning. After a number of disappointing adventures,
broken engagements, evaporated hopes, she had taken a dislike to
the Russian court and preferred the isolation and even the bore-
dom of the countryside to the bustling din and superficial glitter
of the palaces.
While she reflected thus, with a melancholy mixed with bit-
terness, on an imperial future that no longer concerned her, the
emissaries of the Council were hastening to bring word to her
cousin Anna Ivanovna. She received them with a mocking be-
nevolence. In truth, her spies and the well-wishers that she still
had at the court had already informed her of the contents of the
letters which the delegation would bring her. Nevertheless, she
did not indicate in any way what her intentions might be; without
batting an eye, she read the list of rights that the guardians of the
regime dictated she should renounce, and said that she would
agree to it all. She did not even seem to mind being required to
break with her lover, Johann Bühren.
Misled by her dignified and docile air, the plenipotentiaries
never suspected that she had already made arrangements to have
her favorite join her, in Moscow or St. Petersburg, as soon as she
signaled to him that the road was clear. This possibility seemed
all the more likely since she was getting word from her partisans
in Russia that she had considerable support among the minor no-
bility. This group was eager to move against the upper aristocracy,
the
of encroaching on the powers of Her Majesty in order to increase
their own. Rumors were even circulating that in the event of any
conflict, the Imperial Guard, which had always defended the sa-
cred rights of the monarchy, would be disposed to intervene in
< 68 >
favor of the descendant of Peter the Great and Catherine I.
