The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

Maria Theresa gloried in her power of being able to be a public benefactor; it pleased her to bestow benefits. She richly deserved her title of “Mother of her people”; and she declared just before her death that, “if anything reprehensible had been done in her name, it was certainly without her knowledge, as she had always desired the welfare of her subjects.” Her annual private charities and donations amounted to more than eighty thousand a year; and so great was her benevolence that when her son Joseph was accused of not being generous, he replied: “If I gave like my mother, we should soon have nothing left to give away.”

Her benefactions included all classes of her subjects. She founded large hospitals for the infirm and wounded soldiers, and opened asylums of comfort for the widows of officers and young ladies of impoverished families. With such a belligerent neighbor as Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa could not feel assured of any continued period of peace, and she therefore maintained a large army of disciplined troops, and founded military academies at Vienna, Neustadt, and Antwerp.

The simplicity of her court life was a great contrast to the extravagant ostentation of Elizabeth and the dissolute splendor of Catherine II. “In the morning an old man, who could hardly be entitled a chamberlain, but merely what is called on the continent a frotteur, entered her sleeping-room about five or six o’clock, opened the shutters, lighted the stove, and arranged the apartment. She breakfasted on a cup of milk-coffee, then dressed and heard mass. The floor of her room was so contrived that it opened by a sliding parquet, and mass was celebrated in the chapel beneath. On Tuesdays she received the ministers of the various apartments; other days were set apart for giving audience to foreigners and strangers, who, according to the etiquette of the imperial court, were always presented singly, and received in the private apartments. There were stated days on which the poorest and meanest of her subjects were admitted indiscriminately, and they could speak to her in private if they so desired. At other times, she attended to her letters, memorials, despatches, signed papers, etc. During the summer, which was spent mostly at her palaces of Schönbrunn, or at Laxenburg, she would often walk in a shaded avenue communicating with her apartments. A box was buckled round her waist, filled with papers and memorials, which she carefully read as she promenaded, noting with her pencil necessary answers or observations to each.”

She usually dined alone to economize time. After dinner she attended to public business until six in the evening, as she dined at noon; and until her hour of retiring her daughters joined her, when she held a drawing-room or engaged in games with her children. Her daughters were all expected to present themselves at evening prayers, which the empress held before retiring, and nothing but sickness was allowed to interfere with this family regulation.

About two years after the death of her husband she was attacked by small-pox, which was very fatal in her family, she having lost several children by this dread disease. Upon her recovery her marvellous beauty was greatly marred, and being thrown from her carriage soon after and severely wounding her face, her scarred complexion and altered features entirely destroyed her former beauty of countenance, though her queenly bearing and imperial grace continued to charm, and her voice lost none of its melting sweetness.

Experiencing the dread effects of small-pox, she established a small-pox hospital, and introduced inoculation in her kingdom. She paid great attention to the purity of her coinage, and so strong was the faith of her subjects in the money coined under her supervision, that as late as 1830, the workmen at the mint at Milan were coining dollars with the head of the empress-queen and the date 1780. “These dollars were intended for the Levant trade; the people of the Greek Islands, being accustomed to trust in the purity of the coinage bearing the effigy of Maria Theresa, took it in exchange more readily than that of any other potentate.”

The alliance of Maria Theresa with France was productive of dire evils to her family in after-years, as the fate of the beautiful Marie Antoinette, the youngest daughter of Maria Theresa, fully exemplifies. Regarding her other children, several of them were distinguished in after-life. Besides her eldest son, the Emperor Joseph II., Leopold, another son, was Grand-Duke of Tuscany for twenty-five years, when he succeeded to the Empire in 1790. Ferdinand, her third son, married the heiress of the House of Modena, and became Duke of Modena. Maximilian became Elector of Cologne. All of her daughters were beautiful and accomplished. The archduchesses Marianna and Elizabeth remained unmarried. The Archduchess Christina, her mother’s favorite, married Prince Albert of Saxony, which union, like that of her mother’s, was for love rather than political expediency. Christina exercised great influence over her younger sisters, Marie Antoinette, queen of France, and Caroline, queen of Naples. The Archduchess Amelia, another beautiful princess, married the Duke of Parma. Two other sisters, Joanna, and the lamented Josepha, died with small-pox in their early womanhood. The death of the Archduchess Josepha was particularly harrowing, as she contracted the dread disease by obeying her mother’s wishes that she should enter the family burial vault, previous to her departure for Naples, as she was then betrothed to the king of Naples, and go through with certain religious ceremonies which Maria Theresa considered to be binding upon a member of this illustrious family. The lovely Josepha expressed great alarm regarding this exposure to contagion, as her sister had lately died from small-pox; but for once, Maria Theresa allowed her religious bigotry to supplant her better reason, and the sad and tragic result of this filial obedience wrung the mother’s heart with anguish, all the more bitter, as her own commands had doubtless occasioned the death of her idolized child. A third daughter, Caroline, was then betrothed to the King of Naples, in place of her two sisters, whose successive deaths had prevented the contemplated union with the royal family of Naples, both of them having been affianced one after the other, to King Ferdinand.

The great blot upon the otherwise illustrious name of Maria Theresa was her participation in the iniquitous partition of Poland. “She has been rescued from the charge of having originated the unjust plan; since the document of the secret convention, signed at St. Petersburg, on the 17th of February, 1772, exists to prove the contrary; wherein it is stated that if the court of Austria refuse consent to the plan of partition, Prussia and Russia will combine against her. Amid the general outcry that arose in Europe against the crowned spoliators, Frederick the Great slyly observed: ‘As to me, I fully expected all this uproar of blame; but what will they say of her saintship, my cousin?’”

Maria Theresa was now at the height of her grandeur and power as a sovereign. She had largely extended her territories. She had so increased her revenues that, notwithstanding her immense expenses, she laid by each year in her treasury two hundred thousand crowns. She maintained an army of two hundred thousand men, and lived in harmony with her ambitious and accomplished son, in whose name the imperial power was vested. When war with Prussia was again threatening her dominions, her skilful negotiations with Frederick the Great, which resulted in the peace of Teschen, covered her name with glory and her life with honor.

“Maria Theresa often declared that no event of her long reign had ever caused her such unmingled satisfaction as the peace of Teschen.” It was a peace bought without bloodshed. It was entirely her own work, originated in her own benevolent heart. It was the means of continuing to her kingdom the blessing of peaceful prosperity, and it surrounded her dying head with a halo of glory.

Death had long been insidiously approaching this illustrious sovereign, but she felt no alarm, and prepared to meet the end with calm resignation. Dropsy had at length rendered her existence a continued torture, and she welcomed the relief of death. Upon the last night of her life she was engaged in signing papers and in giving necessary directions to her successor. When her son urged her to rest, she replied: “In a few hours I shall appear before the judgment-seat of God, and would you have me sleep?” Upon expressing her anxiety regarding those who had long been aided by her private charities, she said: “If I could wish for immortality on earth, it would only be for the power of relieving the distressed.”

A short time before she breathed her last her attendants thought that she slumbered, as she had closed her eyes; and one whispered, “The empress sleeps.” She immediately opened her eyes, saying with impressive calmness: “No! I do not sleep; I wish to meet my death awake!” Surely such a death-bed scene harmonized with the exalted and illustrious life of Maria Theresa! She expired on the 29th of November, 1780, in her sixty-fourth year.

Her biographers justly style her the “most blameless and beneficent sovereign who ever wore a crown.”

The earthly dower of Maria Theresa was certainly the richest ever granted to any female sovereign of the world. “A strong mind and feeling heart, royalty and beauty, long life and prosperity, a happy marriage, a numerous family, illustrious children, her people’s love, and the admiration of the universe.”

CATHERINE II.

A.D. 1729-1796

“Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant queen.” – Sheridan.

IN mighty Russia, that land of violent extremes, that land of lavish wealth and utter poverty, – whose frightful climate conquered the otherwise invincible Napoleon, and with its keen frosts snapped the pillars of his throne; where millions tremble before a despot whose will is fettered by no constitution; whose prisons are the ice realms of Siberia, whither so many trains of wretched captives have passed to linger hopelessly in living tombs; whose smouldering fires of discontent and hatred, fanned by the ardent breath of Nihilism, are constantly breaking out into rebellion and assassination, – in that land of splendor and of barbarism, behold St. Petersburg, the city of the Czars, founded by Peter the Great in 1703, and risen out of the desolate marshes of Ladoga to be the worthy capital of a great empire.

St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, with its royal and princely residences, adorned with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns surmounted by massive friezes, entablatures, and sculptures; with its Grecian and Gothic temples, its great squares, its splendid, spacious streets, its monuments, its warehouses and docks, its gardens and boulevards, Cronstadt with its frowning bastions and painted spires, and in the midst, giving to all an air of space, of freedom, and dignity, the Neva, thronged by craft of all kinds and sizes, from the tiny gondola to the man-of-war, and from the mighty merchant ship to the rude barge laden with timber or with grain, – presents a scene of opulence and magnificence which makes it difficult to realize that the foundations of this great metropolis were placed in the quaking bogs of Lake Ladoga.

Upon the bank of the Neva, midway between the Senate House and the Admiralty, stands that most famous of the monuments of St. Petersburg, – the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. A splendid statue, this, of bronze and of colossal size. Peter, astride a mighty charger, reins back his steed upon the brink of a precipice, and stretches forth his sceptre, while he seems to survey with proud triumph the wonderful growth of the city of which he is the “creator,” and of which he might exclaim, as did Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, “Is not this great Petersburg, that I have built by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty!”

Little did Peter think, when he laid aside the sceptre of his empire, that five women would reign after him in almost direct succession, and that the last, the greatest of them all, would rear to him this costly monument upon the borders of the Neva.

Peter I. was succeeded by his wife, Catherine, who governed for two years, then Peter II., a poor boy of fourteen, who had the privilege of ruling nominally for a few months, and then Anne, niece of Peter I. was placed upon the throne.

Anne reigned ten years, or rather her favorites reigned for her, and in 1740 she ended her insignificant life. Then baby Prince Ivan was proclaimed Emperor Ivan III. But his mother, Anne of Mecklenburg, thirsted for imperial power. So Biren, the regent, went to Siberia, and Anne of Mecklenberg ruled in his stead. It was only for a year, however, for in 1741 Elizabeth, cousin of Anne, headed the imperial guards who had revolted, and declared herself Empress Elizabeth the First.

Elizabeth ruled for twenty years, and commenced by declaring that “she would never put a subject to death upon any provocation whatever,” – a principle all very fine in theory, but never put in practice. And since it so affected her tender heart to take the lives of her dear subjects, she contented herself by sending them to Siberia, which answered her purpose quite as well.

“Joanna,” said she to her lady of the bedchamber, who one day reproached her for the miserable manner in which she educated her nephew, the grand-duke, – “Joanna, knowest thou the road to Siberia?” Joanna took the hint and henceforth held her peace.

On the 2d of May, 1729, at Stettin, in Prussia, was born Sophia Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst-Bernburg, who, in 1762, resigned all these sonorous and illustrious titles to be called simply —Catherine II.

In 1747 the Empress Elizabeth married her nephew, the worthless grand-duke, to this Princess of Anhalt, and at the death of the empress, in 1761, he became Peter III.

Things went smoothly enough for the first few months, but soon Sophia Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt, desired to reign alone and undisputed upon the throne of the Romanoffs, and in that highly moral and virtuous assembly, the imperial court of St. Petersburg, there were many who, in the hope of self-aggrandizement, would not scruple to terminate the mortal career of the Emperor Peter the Third.

There were three separate conspiracies against the life of Peter; and Catherine, who appeared to do nothing herself, was in reality the mover of all.

Peter was spending a few days at his country palace of Oranienbaum, from whence he was to proceed to the palace of Peterhof, where the conspirators intended to seize and carry him off.

But all these fine plans were overthrown by a soldier of the guard, who innocently asked his captain on what day they were to take up arms against the emperor. The terrified captain, who knew nothing of the conspiracy, gave notice to his superiors. Then all is terror in the ranks of the conspirators; and the Princess Dashkoff, when she learns of the discovery of the plot, hastily gives intelligence to her party. The Empress Catherine sleeps at Peterhof, where she has gone to meet her husband. At two o’clock in the morning a soldier stands at her bedside. It is Alexis Orloff. “Your Majesty,” he says, “has not a moment to lose; rise and follow me!”

The empress and her maid dress in haste. Orloff conducts them to the garden gate, where a carriage is in waiting. The empress and her maid are placed in it. Alexis seizes the reins, and they are off at a gallop.

Before they have gone far the carriage breaks, and Catherine is compelled to continue her journey on foot. When they have walked about a mile, they meet a peasant driving a country cart. Immediately Alexis Orloff seizes the horses, places the empress in the cart, and drives at full speed toward the capital.

The Emperor Peter III. sleeps quietly in his palace at Oranienbaum, while his wife, Catherine II., drives madly along the road from Peterhof to Petersburg, to place upon her head the imperial diadem of Russia.

At seven in the morning Catherine reached St. Petersburg. She immediately presented herself to the soldiers, assuring them that the Czar, her husband, intended to put her to death that very night, and that they were her only protection. This lie was believed at the moment, and the men swore to die in her defence.

The Orloffs raised a cry of “Long live the Empress Catherine!” and the soldiers echoed the shout. Their officers encouraged them, and when Villebois, general of artillery, ventured to remonstrate, Catherine turned upon him haughtily, told him she wanted no advice of his, but to know what he intended to do. The general, confounded at her assumed air of command, could only stammer, “To obey your Majesty!” and immediately delivered the arsenals and magazines of the city into her hands.

Thus in two hours did Catherine find herself upon the throne, with an army at her command, and the capital at her feet.

Meanwhile Peter III., totally unconscious of the usurpation of his unfaithful spouse, ordered his carriage, and set out for Peterhof, where he was informed of the revolt. This news threw him into such horror and confusion, that for a time he lost the use of his faculties. He could resolve on nothing, and his imbecility was like that of a terrified child.

Finally, however, he sat down and wrote a submissive letter to Catherine, acknowledging his errors, and proposing to share the sovereign authority with her. To this letter Catherine gave no reply, except to send Count Panin to the Czar, who persuaded him to sign a declaration that he was not fit to reign, and that he voluntarily abdicated the throne. Having done this, the poor, weak prince was carried off and locked up in the palace of Ropscha. “It was necessary that some apparent reason should be given for such extraordinary proceedings, and a short manifesto was accordingly set forth, proclaiming the accession of Catherine, without any mention of the unhappy emperor, but alleging as her only motives for assuming the government her tender regard for the welfare of the people, and above all for the holy and orthodox Greek religion, which she feared was exposed to total ruin; and this notable document of state villany thus concludes: ‘For these causes, etc., we, putting our trust in Almighty God and in his divine justice, have ascended the imperial throne of all the Russias, and have received a solemn oath of fidelity from all our faithful subjects.’ Dated June 28, 1762.

“Thus, by a revolution which never could have occurred under any other government than that of Russia, which few could account for and no one seemed to comprehend, – which was accomplished in the course of a single day, without injury to individuals, and without tumultuous violence, – did a young woman, a foreigner, and a stranger to the imperial blood, spring into the throne of the Czars.”

Catherine II., having thus established herself upon the throne, began to consider how she could best retain her newly acquired power. The first obstacle which presented itself to her mind was the Czar, Peter III. She had him under lock and key at Ropscha, it is true, but then he had his friends and his faithful Holstein guards, who had seen his downfall with grief and indignation. So Peter III. must be made an end of, and those most accomplished of villains, Orloff and Baratinsky, were sent to Ropscha to make an end of him, which deed they performed very satisfactorily both to themselves and to the empress, by strangling him in his dining apartment with a napkin.

The news of his death was announced to the empress as she was on the point of holding her court, but, as the proper precautions had not been taken, she did not choose to make it public, and went on with her audience with every appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity. On the following day, while dining in public, the death of the Czar was formally announced; and immediately she rose from the table, all bathed in tears, and retired to her apartment, where for several days she feigned the greatest grief. She afterward published a manifesto, in which she announced to her subjects “that it had pleased Almighty God to remove the late Emperor Peter the Third from this world, by a violent attack of a malady to which he had heretofore been subject, and desiring them to consider it as an especial act of Providence working in her favor.” None were stupid enough to believe this monstrous lie, and none were bold enough to contradict it, and this was answer sufficient for the Empress Catherine II.

But “what a sight for the nation itself, a calm spectator of these events! On one side, the grandson of Peter I. dethroned and put to death; on the other, the grandson of the Czar Ivan languishing in fetters; while a Princess of Anhalt usurps the throne of their ancestors, clearing her way to it by a regicide.”

As a sovereign, Catherine displayed marked ability. She effected several useful reforms, established important institutions, encouraged national intercourse, founded schools and hospitals, and erected arsenals and manufactories.

During her lifetime she published a list of two hundred and forty-five cities which she had founded in her dominions. This sounds very grand; but we may look as vainly for her cities as for those of Babylonian Semiramis. In some instances she merely indicated the spot where she intended a city should be erected; in others, she gave the name of a city to some hamlet or village.

When she made her famous voyage down the Dnieper, in 1787, Joseph II. accompanied her to lay the foundations of a city to be called, after her name, Ekaterinaslof, and which, in her imagination, already rivalled St. Petersburg. The empress laid the first stone with great pomp, and the emperor laid the second. On returning from the ceremony, Joseph remarked, in his dry, epigrammatic manner: “The empress and I have this day achieved a great work; she has laid the first stone of a great city, and I have laid the last.” His speech was prophetic. The city never proceeded farther, nor was it thought of again.

Catherine had one overmastering passion, – ambition; and since the basis of her character was selfishness, her ambition began and ended with herself. She was shrewd in principle, astute in judgment, hard in character, and hopelessly corrupt in morals. But “she knew how to make herself looked up to, if not with respect and liking, at least with deference; and Frederick the Great, Louis XV., Maria Theresa, and George III., each in their turn, learned to regard her acts with attention.”

The principal fame of Catherine rests on her celebrated code of laws, and on her title of legislatrix of her dominions.

“If,” said Frederick of Prussia, “several women as sovereigns have obtained a deserved celebrity, – Semiramis for her conquests, Elizabeth of England for her political sagacity, Maria Theresa for her astonishing firmness of character, – to Catherine alone may be given the title of a female law-giver.”

But how much of this was fulsome flattery and how much honest praise, it is not very difficult to discern, considering the gross nature of Catherine, and the cunning diplomacy of Frederick.