The Memoirs of Catherine the Great Read Online Free PDF

Johanna performed her job as mother and aristocrat well, and did everything to arrange a prestigious royal match for her daughter. Two presentation portraits of Catherine were sent to Elizabeth. 14 Elizabeth in turn performed kind gestures for Catherine’s family. In 1742, Elizabeth became the godmother for Catherine’s new sister, Elisabeth (1742–45), named after her, and sent a portrait of herself set in diamonds that were worth 25,000 rubles. She also provided an annual pension to Catherine’s maternal grandmother, Princess Albertine Friederike (1682–1755) of Baden-Durlach. 15 To please Elizabeth and potentially further his own interests in Russia, the Prussian King Frederick II, “the Great” (1712–86, reigned 1740–86), promoted Catherine’s father to Field Marshal. Frederick the Great and Princess Johanna also intrigued in the Russian court, where other factions favored a French or Saxon bride. Aside from Peter, Princess Sophie’s only other serious suitor was her mother’s brother, Georg Ludwig (1719–63), who proposed and was accepted by the young Princess, but not her parents, who had greater aspirations for her. In late 1743, Elizabeth invited the fourteen-year-old Princess Sophie and her mother, but for reasons unknown, specifically not her father, Prince Christian August (1690–1747), to Moscow.
    On February 9, 1744, Princess Sophie arrived in Moscow. As her early and middle memoirs make clear, although Catherine was born into a minor German noble house, her mother had prepared Catherine well for life at a royal court. In fact, Catherine shows her disappointment in the quality of Russian court life. Thanks to her mother’s godmother, the dowager Duchess Elisabeth Sophie Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1683–1767), she and her mother had spent several months each year at one of the most brilliant courts in Germany, where she met and played with some of the future royalty of Europe. While her mother traveled in Europe to keep up family contacts, Princess Sophie stayed with her grandmother in Hamburg and visited, among other places, the Prussian court of Frederick the Great in Berlin. Her governess, Elisabeth Cardel, a French Huguenot and professor’s daughter, introduced her to the customs of French society and to French classical literature. This education allowed her to aspire to a royal marriage.
    As Grand Duchess, Catherine’s position depended on producing a male heir and cultivating political supporters at court. She was under constant scrutiny—no part of her life at court, nor anything in the memoirs, most especially her love life, was private. Catherine had innate political instincts that guided her well during and after her introduction to life in the Russian court. By contrast, even such a successful veteran of court politics as her mother nearly caused her and her daughter’s dismissal before the wedding. 16 Princess Sophie willingly learned Russian, and on June 28, 1744, she converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy and became Ekaterina Alekseevna, in honor of Elizabeth’s mother, Catherine I; the next day, she was betrothed and became Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess. 17 Married on August 21, 1745, the sixteen-year-old bride and seventeen-year-old groom, according to Catherine’s middle memoir, failed to consummate their marriage until 1754, when each was having an officially sanctioned affair in the hopes that experience would encourage them. 18 After two miscarriages, Catherine gave birth, on September 20, 1754, to Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, the future Paul I (d. 1801), perhaps fathered by Sergei Saltykov (1726–1813). 19
    The significance for Catherine of the long-awaited birth of a male heir constitutes the underlying plot of her early memoir, written around 1756. Her son made Catherine’s position at court much more secure, for she was now not only the wife of the heir apparent but also the mother of the future heir. Catherine’s personal security became especially