pleasure described her as a large, rotund woman, heavily made up,
smiling, with a triple chin, a ribald eye and gluttonous lips, gar-
ishly dressed, overloaded with jewels and not necessarily entirely
clean.
However, while everyone denounced her appearance as a
camp-follower masquerading as a sovereign, opinions are more
varied when it comes to her intelligence and decision-making
ability. She barely knew how to read and write; she barely spoke
Russian (and with a Swedish-tinged Polish accent, at that); but
from the first days of her reign she displayed a creditable intention
to emulate her husband’s thinking. She even learned a little
French and German in order to improve her understanding of for-
eign policy issues. And she relied on the common sense that she
inherited from a difficult childhood. Some of her interlocutors
found her more human, more understanding than the late tsar.
< 15 >
That being said, she was conscious of her lack of experience and
consulted Menshikov before making any important decision. Her
enemies claimed, behind her back, that she was entirely beholden
to him and that she was afraid of dissatisfying him through any
personal initiative.
Was she still sleeping with him? Even if she had never de-
prived herself of that pleasure in the past, it is unlikely that she
would have persevered at her age and in her situation. Avid for
fair and flourishing flesh, she had no need to restrict herself to the
pleasures that may be available in the arms of an aging partner.
With complete freedom to choose, she changed lovers according
to her fantasies and did not spare any expense when it came to
rewarding them for their nights of prowess. The French ambassa-
dor, Jacques de Campredon, enjoyed enumerating some of these
transitory darlings in his
thing but an advisor,” he writes. “Count Loewenwolde appears to
have more credit. Sir Devier is still among the most outstanding
favorites. Count Sapieha has also stepped up to the job. He is a
fine young man, well-built. He is often sent bouquets and jew-
els. . . . There are other, second-class favorites, but they are known
only to Johanna, a former chambermaid of the tsarina and agent of
her pleasures.”
At the many suppers she held to regale her companions in
these tournaments of love, Catherine drank like a sailor. At her
command, ordinary vodka (
with strong French and German liquors. She quite often passed
out at the end of these well-lubricated meals. “The tsarina was
rather ill from one of these debaucheries that was held on St. An-
drew’s Day,” noted the same Campredon in a report to his minis-
ter, dated December 25, 1725. “A bleeding set her up again; but, as
she is extremely plump and lives so very irregularly, it is expected
that she will have some accident that will shorten her days.”1
< 16 >
These binges of drinking and lovemaking did not prevent
Catherine from conducting herself like a true autocrat whenever
she recovered her wits. She scolded and slapped her maidservants
for a peccadillo, bellowed at her ordinary advisers, and attended
without a misstep the tiresome parades of the Guard; she rode on
horseback for hours at a time, to soothe her nerves and to prove to
one and all that her physical stamina was beyond dispute. Since
she had a sense of family, she brought in brothers and sisters
(whose existence Peter the Great had always chosen to ignore)
from their remote provinces. At her invitation, former Livonian
and Lithuanian peasants, uncouth and awkwardly stuffed into
formal clothing, disembarked in the salons of St. Petersburg.
Titles of “Count” and “Prince” rained down on their heads, to the
great scandal of the authentic aristocrats. Some of these new
courtiers with calloused hands joined the rest of Her Majesty’s
dinner crowd in the conclaves of good humor and licentiousness.
Nonetheless, however keen she may have been for this disso-
lute debauchery, Catherine always set aside a few hours to deal
with public affairs. Certainly, Menshikov continued to dictate
decisions in matters affecting the interests of the State, but, from
one week to another, Catherine gained in confidence and began to
stand up to her mentor, sometimes to the point of disputing his
opinions.
While recognizing that she would never be able to do with-
out the advice of this competent, devoted, wily man, she con-
vinced him to convene around her a High Privy Council, including
not only Menshikov but several other characters whose fidelity to
Her Majesty was notorious: Tolstoy, Apraxin, Vice Chancellor
Golovkin, Ostermann. . . This supreme cabinet relegated the tra-
ditional Senate to the sidelines, where they no longer discussed
any questions of primary importance. It was at the instigation of
the High Council that Catherine decided to ease the fate of the
< 17 >
