most brilliant promotion was granted to Dolgoruky, newly re-
turned from exile. Even subordinates (the most conscientious of
them) did well during this period when reparations were being
made for the injustices of the preceding reign. The new benefici-
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aries of imperial largesse shared the spoils taken from those who
had lost. Commenting on this waltz, Mardefeld wrote to Freder-
ick II: “Count Loewenwolde’s clothing, underwear, hose and lin-
ens were distributed among the empress’s chamberlains, who
were naked as a hand. Of the four most recently named gentle-
men of the chamber, two had been lackeys and a third had served
as stableman.”3
As for the leading protagonists, Elizabeth rewarded them far
more than they could have hoped. Lestocq became a count, pri-
vate counselor to Her Majesty, premier doctor to the court, and
director of “the college of medicine” with a 7,000-ruble annual re-
tainer for life. Mikhail Vorontsov, Alexander Shuvalov and Alexis
Razumovsky awoke the next day (and a beautiful morning it was)
as grand chamberlains and knights of St. Andrew. At the same
time, the entire company of grenadiers of the Preobrazhensky
Regiment, which had contributed to the tsarina’s success on No-
vember 25, 1741, was converted into a company of personal body-
guards for Her Majesty under the Germanic name of the
moted one level; their uniforms were adorned with an escutcheon
bearing the device “Fidelity and Zeal.” Some were even brought
into the nobility, with hereditary titles, together with gifts of
lands and up to 2,000 rubles. Alexis Razumovsky and Mikhail
Vorontsov, who had no military knowledge whatsoever, were
named Lieutenant Generals, with concomitant rewards of money
and domains.
Despite all this repeated generosity, the leaders of the coup
d’état were always asking for more. Far from appeasing them, the
tsarina’s prodigality turned their heads. They thought she “owed
them everything” because they had “given their all.” Their wor-
ship for the
Within Elizabeth’s entourage, the men of the
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called the “creative grenadiers,” since they had “created” the new
sovereign, or “Her Majesty’s big kids,” since she treated them with
an almost maternal indulgence. Aggravated by the insolence of
these low class parvenus, Mardefeld complained in a dispatch to
King Frederick II of Prussia, “They [the empress’s grenadiers] re-
fuse to get out of the court, they are well-entrenched, . . . they
walk in the galleries where Her Majesty holds her court, they min-
gle with people of the first quality, . . . they stuff their faces at the
same table where the empress sits, and she is so nice to them that
she has gone as far as to sign an order to print the image of a
grenadier on the back of the new rubles.”4
In a report dating from the same month and year Edward
Finch, the English ambassador, wrote that the bodyguards as-
signed to the palace had deserted their stations one fine day in
order to protest the disciplinary action inflicted upon one of them
by their superior officer, the Prince of Hesse-Homburg; Her Maj-
esty was indignant that anyone should have dared to punish her
“children” without asking her authorization and she embraced the
victims of such iniquity.
She always tried to give preference to Russians when mak-
ing appointments to sensitive positions, but she was often forced
to call upon foreigners to fulfill functions requiring a minimum of
competence, despite her good intentions. Thus, given the lack of
qualified personnel, one after another of Münnich’s former victims
reappeared in St. Petersburg to populate the ministries and chan-
celleries. Devier and Brevern, back in the saddle, brought in other
Germans including Siewers and Flück.
To justify these inevitable offenses to Slavic nationalism,
Elizabeth cited her model Peter the Great who, in his own words,
had wanted to “open a window on Europe.” France was, cer-
tainly, at the center of this ideal Europe, with its light take on life,
its fine culture and philosophical irony; but there was Germany,
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too — such a thoughtful, disciplined, industrious nation, so rich
in military and commercial professionals, so well-endowed with
princes and princesses in need of marriage partners! Could Eliza-
beth fish, according to her needs, in both of these ponds? Should
she really refrain from employing experienced men, simply in or-
der to Russianize everything? Her dream would be to reconcile
the local customs with new ideas from abroad, to enrich the ways
of the Russophiles, so much in love with their past, by bringing in
contributions from the West, to create a German or French Rus-
sia without betraying the traditions of the fatherland.
While pondering which way to turn, under pressure from
