in by H. M. Scott, ed., Romanovs. Her mother's opposition to this practice brought her the empress's disfavour. By the winter of 1773, the Pugachev revolt had started to threaten. In these cases, it was necessary to replace this "fake" empress with the "true" empress, whoever she may be. In reality, Catherine the Great died of a stroke and she was discovered collapsed on the floor in her washroom. Kamenskii A. Aided by her lover Grigory Orlov and his powerful family, she staged a coup just six months after her husband took the throne. The choice of Princess Sophie as wife of the future tsar was one result of the Lopukhina affair in which Count Jean Armand de Lestocq and King Frederick the Great of Prussia took an active part. Catherine I of Russia. While the deeply entrenched system of Russian serfdomin which peasants were enslaved by and freely traded among feudal lordswas at odds with her philosophical values, Catherine recognized that her main base of support was the nobility, which derived its wealth from feudalism and was therefore unlikely to take kindly to these laborers emancipation. There was every chance he was going to be assassinated. [1] The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the short reign of Peter III and confirmed by Catherine, freed Russian nobles from compulsory military or state service. The most famous of these rumors is that she died after having sex with her horse. [d] As a patron of the arts, she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, including the establishment of the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe. Russia inflicted some of the heaviest defeats ever suffered by the Ottoman Empire, including the Battle of Chesma (57 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). [83][84], Catherine also received Elisabeth Vige Le Brun at her Tsarskoye Selo residence in St Petersburg, by whom she was painted shortly before her death. She recovered well enough to begin to plan a ceremony which would establish her favourite grandson Alexander as her heir, superseding her difficult son Paul, but she died before the announcement could be made, just over two months after the engagement ball. The formidable Catherine had little time for her heir. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical[clarification needed] methods. The bonnet which held her white hair was not decorated with ribbons, but with the most beautiful diamonds. [77] In the second category fell the work of Denis Diderot, Jacques Necker, Johann Bernhard Basedow and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Catherine had been targeted for being unmarried.[137]. Only 400,000 roubles of church wealth were paid back. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. Four years later, in 1766, she endeavoured to embody in legislation the principles of Enlightenment she learned from studying the French philosophers. [92] The Establishment of the Moscow Foundling Home (Moscow Orphanage) was the first attempt at achieving that goal. These differences led both parties to seek intimacy elsewhere, a fact that raised questions, both at the time and in the centuries since, about the paternity of their son, the future Paul I. Catherine herself suggested in her memoirs that Paul was the child of her first lover, Sergei Saltykov. Apart from providing that experience, the marriage was unsuccessfulit was not consummated for years due to Peter III's mental immaturity. Catherine The Great's Infamous Death Vigilius Eriksen/Grand Peterhof Palace Equestrian portrait of Catherine the Great in uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, one of the oldest Imperial Russian guard units, circa 1762. Th, The 8 weirdest British monarch deaths in history, Historys greatest love affair: Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great and the coup that made her Empress, Josephine Baker: The iconic performer turned WWII hero. By 1759, he and Catherine had become lovers; no one told Catherine's husband, the Grand Duke Peter. At the time of Peter III's overthrow, other potential rivals for the throne included Ivan VI (17401764), who had been confined at Schlsselburg in Lake Ladoga from the age of six months and who was thought to be insane. Her father did not travel to Russia for the wedding. [95], From 1768 to 1774, no progress was made in setting up a national school system. 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. The cause of death was confirmed by autopsy. The following year, the 16-year-old wed her betrothed, officially becoming Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna. The objective was to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia, to weaken the influence of Austria, and to overthrow the chancellor Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a known partisan of the Austrian alliance on whom Russian Empress Elizabeth relied. [30], Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 17631781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of her reign. After the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Svensksund in 1790, the parties signed the Treaty of Vrl (14 August 1790), returning all conquered territories to their respective owners and confirming the Treaty of bo. Though not stupid, he was totally lacking in common sense, argues Isabel de Madariaga in Catherine the Great: A Short History. It also stipulated in detail the subjects to be taught at every age and the method of teaching. K. D. Bugrov, "Nikita Panin and Catherine II: Conceptual aspect of political relations". [65] Naturally, the serfs did not like it when Catherine tried to take away their right to petition her because they felt as though she had severed their connection to the autocrat, and their power to appeal to her. when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation. Several bank branches were afterwards established in other towns, called government towns. 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. Sergei Saltykov was used to make Peter jealous, and relations with Saltykov were platonic. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before. Catherines success as a ruler was also a driving factor behind the rumours. She later wrote that she stayed at one end of the castle, and Peter at the other.[10]. Catherine was stretched on a ceremonial bed surrounded by the coats of arms of all the towns in Russia. In many ways, the Orthodox Church fared no better than its foreign counterparts during the reign of Catherine. 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. [79], Within a few months of her accession in 1762, having heard the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French Encyclopdie on account of its irreligious spirit, Catherine proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection. [86] She believed a 'new kind of person' could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. Ruth P. Dawson, "Perilous News and Hasty Biography: Representations of Catherine II Immediately after her Seizure of the Throne." This raised her in the empress's esteem. The belief at the time was that women were inferior to men, whose role was to be subordinate to their husbands. [76], Catherine read three sorts of books, namely those for pleasure, those for information, and those to provide her with a philosophy. Catherine completed the conquest of the south, making Russia the dominant power in the Balkans after the Russo-Turkish War of 17681774. On the following day, the formal betrothal of Catherine and Peter took place and the long-planned dynastic marriage finally occurred on 21 August 1745 in Saint Petersburg. Adapted from his 2008 play of the same name, the ten-part miniseries is the brainchild of screenwriter Tony McNamara. She nationalised all of the church lands to help pay for her wars, largely emptied the monasteries, and forced most of the remaining clergymen to survive as farmers or from fees for baptisms and other services. Under her leadership, she completed what Peter III had started. [45] The Dzungar genocide which was committed by the Qing state had led many Dzungars to seek sanctuary in the Russian Empire, and it was also one of the reasons for the abrogation of the Treaty of Kyakhta. While a significant improvement, it was only a minuscule number, compared to the size of the Russian population. In terms of making Russia a great power, says Hartley, these efforts proved successful. Yekaterina Alexeevna or Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great (Russian: II , Yekaterina II Velikaya; 2 May 1729 - 17 November 1796), was the most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reigning from 9 July 1762 until her death in 1796 at the age of 67. Jaques says that Catherine initially started collecting art as a political calculation aimed at legitimizing her status as a Westernized monarch. Alexander Radishchev published his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1790, shortly after the start of the French Revolution. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. Because the serfs had no political power, they rioted to convey their message. Sophie's childhood was very uneventful. She also promoted westernization and modernization for her country, though it was within the context of maintaining . [73] The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style. [105][additional citation(s) needed], In 1785, Catherine approved the subsidising of new mosques and new town settlements for Muslims. After her death, her enemies spread gossip about her that has endured for . Catherine then sought to have inoculations throughout her empire and stated: "My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger". Share this: Like this: Loading. In addition, some governors listened to the complaints of serfs and punished nobles, but this was by no means universal. Yet by the end of Catherine's reign, an estimated 62,000 pupils were being educated in some 549 state institutions. Some claimed Catherine failed to supply enough money to support her educational program. He later became the de facto absolute ruler of New Russia, governing its colonisation. [100] Two years after the implementation of Catherine's program, a member of the National Commission inspected the institutions established. Her dynasty lost power because of this and of a war with Austria and Germany, impossible without her foreign policy.[48]. [101], Catherine's apparent embrace of all things Russian (including Orthodoxy) may have prompted her personal indifference to religion. [19] In the first version of her memoirs, edited and published by Alexander Hertzen, Catherine strongly implied that the real father of her son Paul was not Peter, but rather Saltykov.[20]. McNamara tells the Sydney Morning Herald that this apocryphal anecdote helped inspire The Great., It seemed like her life had been reduced to a salacious headline about having sex with a horse, the writer says. Book. Rumour and degrading slander became the weapon by which they would take jabs at her legacy. In 1774, a disillusioned military officer named Yemelyan Pugachev capitalized on the unrest fomented by Russias ongoing fight with Turkey to lead hundreds of thousands into rebellion. In doing so, she ruffled the feathers of men around the world. A ball was given at the imperial court on 11 September when the engagement was supposed to be announced. The bridegroom, known as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of present-day[update] Germany near the border with Denmark) in 1739. Inspired by Byzantine design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the eastern and western Roman empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop. The frustration affected Catherine's health. However, because her second cousin Peter III converted to Orthodox Christianity, her mother's brother became the heir to the Swedish throne[4] and two of her first cousins, Gustav III and Charles XIII, later became Kings of Sweden. Cartoons drawn by foreign press perpetuated them, consistently degrading Catherine and exaggerating her apparent promiscuity. The most famous of these rumors is that she died after having sex with her horse. When she wrote her memoirs, she said she made the decision then to do whatever was necessary and to profess to believe whatever was required of her to become qualified to wear the crown. To put it bluntly, Catherine was a usurper. She came to power following the overthrow of her husband, Peter III. Sophie recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in Russia, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. She established a centralised medical administration charged with initiating vigorous health policies. Apply organic citrus and avocado . This is the real history behind the period comedy. Before her death she recognized Peter II, the grandson of Peter I and Eudoxia, as her successor. On the morning of 5 November 1796 . This is why some serfs were able to do things such as to accumulate wealth. A new Hulu series titled The Great takes its cue from the little-known beginnings of Catherines reign. Heres what you need to know to separate fact from fiction ahead of the series May 15 premiere. Thirty-four years after assuming the throne, Catherine passed away on November 6, 1796. For example, she took action to limit the number of new serfs; she eliminated many ways for people to become serfs, culminating in the manifesto of 17 March 1775, which prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again.[61]. [12] She disparaged her husband for his devotion to reading on the one hand "Lutheran prayer-books, the other the history of and trial of some highway robbers who had been hanged or broken on the wheel". It was instituted by the Fundamental Law of 7 November 1775. The church's lands were expropriated, and the budget of both monasteries and bishoprics were controlled by the Collegium of Accounting. The official cause of death was advertised as hemorrhoidal colican absurd diagnosis that soon became a popular euphemism for assassination, according to Montefiore. It was a failure because it narrowed and stifled entrepreneurship and did not reward economic development. Her rise to power was supported by her mother Joanna's wealthy relatives, who were both nobles and royal relations. I think the title card reads an occasionally true story, McNamara tells the Sydney Morning Heralds Michael Idato. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility. The nobles were imposing a stricter rule than ever, reducing the land of each serf and restricting their freedoms further beginning around 1767. His mother was the daughter of Russia's Peter the Great, and his father the nephew of Sweden's Charles XII. Peter III was extremely capricious, adds Hartley. Catherine II (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 - 17 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. Catherine's eldest sonand heirmay have been illegitimate. As journalist Susan Jaques, author of The Empress of Art, explains, the couple couldnt have been more different in terms of their intellect [and] interests.. On 16 November 1796, Catherine woke up and followed her usual routine. She was a patron of the . After defeating Polish loyalist forces in the PolishRussian War of 1792 and in the Kociuszko Uprising (1794), Russia completed the partitioning of Poland, dividing all of the remaining Commonwealth territory with Prussia and Austria (1795). [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. In addition, they received land to till, but were taxed a certain percentage of their crops to give to their landowners. The Russian troops set out from Kizlyar in April 1796 and stormed the key fortress of Derbent on 10 May. For all her achievements, Catherine is often remembered for the multitude of salacious and slanderous rumours attached to her name, none more famous than the one surrounding her death. Although the government knew that Judaism existed, Catherine and her advisers had no real definition of what a Jew is because the term meant many things during her reign. Catherine separated the Jews from Orthodox society, restricting them to the Pale of Settlement. She made use of the social theory ideas of German cameralism and French physiocracy, as well as Russian precedents and experiments such as foundling homes. [103], Catherine took many different approaches to Islam during her reign. On 5 August 1786, the Russian Statute of National Education was created. [5] In accordance with the custom then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. Paul ascended to the throne and was known as Emperor Paul I. Catherine's will was discovered in . For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs. Peter and Catherine had both been involved in a 1749 Russian military plot to crown Peter (together with Catherine) in Elizabeth's stead. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of Babylon, a subject on which he published a tragedy in 1768). She came from a very poor family and did not have a pleasant childhood. The emperor's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. But in a purely humanitarian light, Catherines expansionist drive came at a great cost to the conquered nations and the czarinas own country alike. In 1757, Poniatowski served in the British Army during the Seven Years' War, thus severing close relationships with Catherine. [126] The last of her lovers, Platon Zubov, was 40 years her junior. The Hermitage Museum, which now[update] occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. She fell into a coma and died the next day whilst lying in her bed. [125] Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards them, even after the affair ended. They were pressured into Orthodoxy through monetary incentives. Amazingly, writes Montefiore, the regicidal, uxoricidal German usurper recovered her reputation not just as Russian tsar and successful imperialist but also as an enlightened despot, the darling of the philosophes.. They often became trusted advisors who she then promoted into positions of authority. In the same year, Catherine issued the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. [8] The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, with a concentration upon learning the etiquette expected of a lady, French, and Lutheran theology. And if you can't find enough dirt to your satisfaction, make stuff up. [115] She closed 569 of 954 monasteries, of which only 161 received government money. Briefwechsel mit der Kaiserin Katharina", "Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible", "The Ambiguous Legal Status of Russian Jewry in the Reign of Catherine II", "Catherine II and the Serfs: A Reconsideration of Some Problems", Bibliography of Russian history (16131917), Some of the code of laws mentioned above, along with other information, Manifesto of the Empress Catherine II, inviting foreign immigration, Biography of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, Family tree of the ancestors of Catherine the Great, Diaries and Letters: Catherine II German Princess Who Came to Rule Russia, Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Lneburg, Catherine Alexeievna (Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst), Natalia Alexeievna (Wilhelmina Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt), Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Wrttemberg), Anna Feodorovna (Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld), Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia), Elena Pavlovna (Charlotte of Wrttemberg), Alexandra Iosifovna (Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg), Maria Pavlovna (Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin), Elizabeth Feodorovna (Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine), Alexandra Georgievna (Alexandra of Greece and Denmark), Elizaveta Mavrikievna (Elisabeth of Saxe-Altenburg), Anastasia Nikolaevna (Anastasia of Montenegro), Militza Nikolaevna of Montenegro (Milica of Montenegro), Maria Georgievna (Maria of Greece and Denmark), Viktoria Feodorovna (Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catherine_the_Great&oldid=1142635143, 18th-century people from the Russian Empire, 18th-century women from the Russian Empire, Burials at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Lutheranism, Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Mistresses of Stanisaw August Poniatowski, People of the War of the Bavarian Succession, Recipients of the Order of St. George of the First Degree, Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland), Articles containing Russian-language text, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2020, Articles lacking reliable references from November 2018, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Articles lacking in-text citations from July 2022, Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2008, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2009, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from August 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from April 2022, Articles needing additional references from December 2022, Articles with Russian-language sources (ru), Articles with self-published sources from November 2021, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the New International Encyclopedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, According to court gossip, this lost pregnancy was attributed to. ", [Kazimir Valishevsky. A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vige Le Brun's memoirs. Paul I of Russia was the son and successor of Catherine the Great, who took the Romanov throne away from her feeble-minded husband, Tsar Peter III, and had him killed in 1762, an event which ever afterwards preyed on the mind of their son, then a boy of eight. All the ladies, some of whom took turn to watch by the body, would go and kiss this hand, or at least appear to." The most widely known story of Catherine the Great involves her death at age 67 in 1796. The Treaty of Kk Kaynarca, signed 10 July 1774, gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn, and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. Russia's State Council in 1770 announced a policy in favour of eventual Crimean independence. She also established a commission composed of T.N. Paper notes were issued upon payment of similar sums in copper money, which were also refunded upon the presentation of those notes.