I think the title card reads an occasionally true story, McNamara tells the Sydney Morning Heralds Michael Idato. Grigory Potemkin was involved in the palace coup of 1762. 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. 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. Historians consider her efforts to be a success. In reality, Catherine the Great died of a stroke and she was discovered collapsed on the floor in her washroom. It's unclear if the murder was ordered by Catherine the Great, or carried out without her consent. Madame Vige Le Brun vividly describes the empress in her memoirs:[85], the sight of this famous woman so impressed me that I found it impossible to think of anything: I could only stare at her. "Did Orlov Buy the Orlov". The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books. [9] It was during this period that she first read Voltaire and the other philosophes of the French Enlightenment. No evidence conclusively linking Catherine to her husbands death exists, but as many historians have pointed out, his demise benefitted her immensely. 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.. Potemkin had the task of briefing him and travelling with him to Saint Petersburg. Catherine channels her anger over her mother's death into handling the border conflict with the Ottomans. 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 created the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly to help regulate Muslim-populated regions as well as regulate the instruction and ideals of mullahs. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. Her genius seemed to rest on her forehead, which was both high and wide. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress. [100] Two years after the implementation of Catherine's program, a member of the National Commission inspected the institutions established. In addition, they received land to till, but were taxed a certain percentage of their crops to give to their landowners. Catherine promised more serfs of all religions, as well as amnesty for convicts, if Muslims chose to convert to Orthodoxy. Catherine the Great actually expired alone and of natural causes. The Manifesto of 1763 begins with Catherine's title: We, Catherine the second, by the Grace of God, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russians at Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tsarina of Kasan, Tsarina of Astrachan, Tsarina of Siberia, Lady of Pleskow and Grand Duchess of Smolensko, Duchess of Estonia and Livland, Carelial, Tver, Yugoria, Permia, Viatka and Bulgaria and others; Lady and Grand Duchess of Novgorod in the Netherland of Chernigov, Resan, Rostov, Yaroslav, Beloosrial, Udoria, Obdoria, Condinia, and Ruler of the entire North region and Lady of the Yurish, of the Cartalinian and Grusinian tsars and the Cabardinian land, of the Cherkessian and Gorsian princes and the lady of the manor and sovereign of many others. "The circumstances and cause of death, and the intentions and degree of responsibility of those involved can never be known," wrote Robert K. Massie in his seminal biography, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. On 25 November, the coffin, richly decorated in gold fabric, was placed atop an elevated platform at the Grand Gallery's chamber of mourning, designed and decorated by Antonio Rinaldi. She was also very fat, but her face was still beautiful, and she wore her white hair up, framing it perfectly. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure. Like Empress Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission almost a consultative parliament composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. The global trade of Russian natural resources and Russian grain provoked famines, starvation and fear of famines in Russia. [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". The following year, the 16-year-old wed her betrothed, officially becoming Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna. Catherineflanked by Orlov and her growing cadre of supportersarrived at the Winter Palace to make her official debut as Catherine II, sole ruler of Russia. A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vige Le Brun's memoirs. Catherine the Great is a monarch mired in misconception. 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. A further 2.8million belonged to the Russian state.[55]. The official cause of death was a stroke but was possibly an assassination. It was obvious to her that Peters hostility had evolved into a determination to end their marriage and remove her from public life., Far from resigning herself to this fate, Catherine bided her time and watched as Peter alienated key factions at court. It opened in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1769. Old Believers were allowed to hold elected municipal positions after the Urban Charter of 1785, and she promised religious freedom to those who wished to settle in Russia. )This practice was not unusual by the court standards of the day . Running and games were forbidden, and the building was kept particularly cold because too much warmth was believed to be harmful to the developing body, as was excessive play. Princess Sophie's father, a devout German Lutheran, opposed his daughter's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. [103], Catherine took many different approaches to Islam during her reign. Cookie Policy Only in this way apart from conscription to the army could a serf leave the farm for which he was responsible but this was used for selling serfs to people who could not own them legally because of absence of nobility abroad. In addition to collecting art, Catherine commissioned an array of new cultural projects, including an imposing bronze monument to Peter the Great, Russias first state library, exact replicas of Raphaels Vatican City loggias and palatial neoclassical buildings constructed across St. Petersburg. She is often included in the ranks of the enlightened despots. 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. The British ambassador James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury, reported back to London: Her Majesty has a masculine force of mind, obstinacy in adhering to a plan, and intrepidity in the execution of it; but she wants the more manly virtues of deliberation, forbearance in prosperity and accuracy of judgment, while she possesses in a high degree the weaknesses vulgarly attributed to her sexlove of flattery, and its inseparable companion, vanity; an inattention to unpleasant but salutary advice; and a propensity to voluptuousness which leads to excesses that would debase a female character in any sphere of life. With Peter out of the picture, Catherine was able to consolidate power from a position of strength. | ]]> She succeeded her husband as empress regnant, following the precedent established when Catherine I succeeded her husband Peter the Great in 1725. Catherine became a great patron of Russian opera. Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, USA. 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). [134] An autopsy confirmed a stroke as the cause of death. However, usually, if the serfs did not like the policies of the empress, they saw the nobles as corrupt and evil, preventing the people of Russia from communicating with the well-intentioned empress and misinterpreting her decrees. In the end, it seems the misogynists somewhat got their wish since the rumour still doggedly persists to this day. Segments of public opinion turned against Catherine when she took a stand against the . Given the frequency which this story was repeated together with Catherine's love of her adopted homeland and her love of horses, it is likely that these details were conflated into this rumor. Under Catherine's rule, despite her enlightened ideals, the serfs were generally unhappy and discontented. She fell into a coma and died the next day whilst lying in her bed. But while the empress did have her fair share of lovers12 to be exactshe was not the sexual deviant of popular lore. Longest ruling Russian empress, 17621796, "Catherine II" redirects here. The truss holding her equine paramour broke, crushing Catherine to death beneath the poor beast. Isabel De Madariaga, "Catherine the Great." Catherine then left with the Ismailovsky Regiment to go to the Semenovsky Barracks, where the clergy was waiting to ordain her as the sole occupant of the Russian throne. On 16 November 1796, Catherine woke up and followed her usual routine. 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. Born in 1729, and known as Catherine the Great because she served as Russia's longest-reigning female ruler, she was empress from 1762 until her death in 1796. But Russia's Baltic Fleet checked the Royal Swedish navy in the tied Battle of Hogland (July 1788), and the Swedish army failed to advance. [93], Not long after the Moscow Foundling Home, at the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoy, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded the famous Smolny Institute in 1764, first of its kind in Russia. The event was glorified by the court poet Derzhavin in his famous ode; he later commented bitterly on Zubov's inglorious return from the expedition in another remarkable poem. Elite acceptance of a female ruler was more of an issue in Western Europe than in Russia. In the second partition, in 1793, Russia received the most land, from west of Minsk almost to Kiev and down the river Dnieper, leaving some spaces of steppe down south in front of Ochakov, on the Black Sea. [76], Catherine read three sorts of books, namely those for pleasure, those for information, and those to provide her with a philosophy. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.[127]. [77] She especially liked the work of German comic writers such as Moritz August von Thmmel and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai. And if you can't find enough dirt to your satisfaction, make stuff up. She . Eight days later, the dethroned tsar was dead, killed under still-uncertain circumstances alternatively characterized as murder, the inadvertent result of a drunken brawl and a total accident. The cabinet was said to have enormous penises for legs, whilst other erotic imagery adorned its sides. If a noble did not live up to his side of the deal, the serfs could file complaints against him by following the proper channels of law. Later uprisings in Poland led to the third partition in 1795. Some claimed Catherine failed to supply enough money to support her educational program. She acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia. Ivan VI was assassinated during an attempt to free him as part of a failed coup. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova (17531775) was another potential rival. She started out married to Emperor Peter III, as Time tells us, who was less than competent. The nobles were imposing a stricter rule than ever, reducing the land of each serf and restricting their freedoms further beginning around 1767. Money was needed for wars and necessitated the junking the old financial institutions. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical[clarification needed] methods. [78] In the third category fell the work of Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, Ferdinando Galiani, Nicolas Baudeau, and Sir William Blackstone.