catherine the great cause of death

[125] Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards them, even after the affair ended. By building new settlements with mosques placed in them, Catherine attempted to ground many of the nomadic people who wandered through southern Russia. Writing for History Extra, Hartley describes Catherines Russia as an undoubtedly aggressive nation that clashed with the Ottomans, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and the Crimea in pursuit of additional territory for an already vast empire. Another theory argues that he died through injuries sustained from . No. | Throughout Russia, the inspectors encountered a patchy response. As Simon Sebag Montefiore notes in The Romanovs: 16181918, Peter, then on holiday in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, was oblivious to his wifes actions. The Hermitage Museum, which now[update] occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. I have said that she was quite small, and yet on the days when she made her public appearances, with her head held high, her eagle-like stare and a countenance accustomed to command, all this gave her such an air of majesty that to me she might have been Queen of the World; she wore the sashes of three orders, and her costume was both simple and regal; it consisted of a muslin tunic embroidered with gold fastened by a diamond belt, and the full sleeves were folded back in the Asiatic style. 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. [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. By cleverly surrounding herself with those allied to her cause she strengthened her hold on the throne. Aided by her lover Grigory Orlov and his powerful family, she staged a coup just six months after her husband took the throne. Elite acceptance of a female ruler was more of an issue in Western Europe than in Russia. On the night of 8 July (OS: 27 June 1762),[22] Catherine was given the news that one of her co-conspirators had been arrested by her estranged husband and that all they had been planning must take place at once. She believed in the . This reversal aroused the frustration and enmity of the powerful Zubovs and other officers who took part in the campaign: many of them would be among the conspirators who arranged Paul's murder five years later.[39]. These reforms in the Cadet Corps influenced the curricula of the Naval Cadet Corps and the Engineering and Artillery Schools. [115] Their place in government was restricted severely during the years of Catherine's reign. After Peter took a mistress, Catherine became involved with other prominent court figures. In terms of making Russia a great power, says Hartley, these efforts proved successful. These were the privileges a serf was entitled to and that nobles were bound to carry out. But the actual story of the monarch's death is far simpler: On November 16, 1796, the 67-year-old empress . In 1772, Catherine's close friends informed her of Orlov's affairs with other women, and she dismissed him. They introduced numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing. [139][140] According to lisabeth Vige Le Brun: "The empress's body lay in state for six weeks in a large and magnificently decorated room in the castle, which was kept lit day and night. Peter ceased Russian operations against Prussia, and Frederick suggested the partition of Polish territories with Russia. Russia and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War (17561763), and Russian troops had occupied Berlin in 1761. [citation needed] She bore him a daughter named Anna Petrovna in December 1757 (not to be confused with Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, the daughter of Peter I's second marriage), although she was legally regarded as Grand Duke Peter's.[129]. Nobles in each district elected a Marshal of the Nobility, who spoke on their behalf to the monarch on issues of concern to them, mainly economic ones. [73], She made a special effort to bring leading intellectuals and scientists to Russia, and she wrote her own comedies, works of fiction, and memoirs. [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". In reality, those in power were beginning to fear the power that Russia was now wielding. Three of her sons were kings of France . By the end of her reign, 50 provinces and nearly 500 districts were created, government officials numbering more than double this were appointed, and spending on local government increased sixfold. The imperial couple moved into the new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. 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. She died of natural causes, of a stroke, when she was 67 years old. Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history. Finally, it was the Annals by Tacitus that caused what she called a "revolution" in her teenage mind as Tacitus was the first intellectual she read who understood power politics as they are, not as they should be. Born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a principality in modern-day central Germany, in 1729, the czarina-to-be hailed from an impoverished Prussian family whose bargaining power stemmed from its noble connections. And if you can't find enough dirt to your satisfaction, make stuff up. In her accession to power and her rule of the empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably Count Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Her male enemies created the legends that still reverberate around todays World Wide Web. The empress prepared the "Instructions for the Guidance of the Assembly", pillaging (as she frankly admitted) the philosophers of Western Europe, especially Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria.[80][81]. [106], Russia often treated Judaism as a separate entity, where Jews were maintained with a separate legal and bureaucratic system. M. B. W. Trent, "Catherine the Great Invites Euler to Return to St. Catherine de' Medici, also called Catherine de Mdicis, Italian Caterina de' Medici, (born April 13, 1519, Florence [Italy]died January 5, 1589, Blois, France), queen consort of Henry II of France (reigned 1547-59) and subsequently regent of France (1560-74), who was one of the most influential personalities of the Catholic-Huguenot wars. The truth of the matter was Catherine couldnt trust the systematic bureaucracy in Russia nor the many noblemen installed by her husband before her. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. Russia was to stop any involvement in internal affairs of Sweden. In reality, Catherine the Great died of a stroke and she was discovered collapsed on the floor in her washroom. Legend has it Catherine was intimately involved with one of her prized stallions, with who she often spent a great deal of unsupervised time with. [91] This work emphasised the fostering of the creation of a 'new kind of people' raised in isolation from the damaging influence of a backward Russian environment. In 1772, Catherine wrote to Potemkin. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical[clarification needed] methods. Upon arriving in St. Petersburg in 1744, Sophie converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, adopted a Russian name and began learning to speak the language. But when he arrived at his palace and found it abandoned, he realized what had occurred. She soon became popular with several powerful political groups that opposed her husband. Children of serfs were born into serfdom and worked the same land their parents had. In 1786, she assimilated the Islamic schools into the Russian public school system under government regulation. In addition to the textbooks translated by the commission, teachers were provided with the "Guide to Teachers". Because the Moscow Foundling Home was not established as a state-funded institution, it represented an opportunity to experiment with new educational theories. The Tokugawa shogunate received the mission, but negotiations failed. Jaques cites a Vigilius Ericksen portrait of the empress as emblematic of Catherines many contradictions. When the frail Grand Duchess died on 8 March 1759, she was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery with Catherine and Elizabeth present. She found that piecemeal reform worked poorly because there was no overall view of a comprehensive state budget. Catherine tried to keep the Jews away from certain economic spheres, even under the guise of equality; in 1790, she banned Jewish citizens from Moscow's middle class.[112]. Further compounding these unpopular decisions were his attempted repudiation of his wife in favor of his mistress and his seizure of church lands under the guise of secularization. [42], The Qianlong Emperor of China was committed to an expansionist policy in Central Asia and saw the Russian Empire as a potential rival, making for difficult and unfriendly relations between Beijing and Saint Petersburg. She was especially impressed with his argument that people do not act for their professed idealistic reasons, and instead she learned to look for the "hidden and interested motives". 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). When Catherine agreed to the First Partition of Poland, the large new Jewish element was treated as a separate people, defined by their religion. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure. Along the way, she became a very passionate, knowledgeable proponent of painting, sculpture, books, architecture, opera, theater and literature. All of this meant that the target on Catherines back was even greater. Although the idea of partitioning Poland came from the King Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine took a leading role in carrying it out in the 1790s. She started out married to Emperor Peter III, as Time tells us, who was less than competent. [32], Peter the Great had succeeded in gaining a toehold in the south, on the edge of the Black Sea, in the Azov campaigns. A key principle was responsibilities defined by function. Wrens: The history of the Women's Royal Naval Service, The life of Noor Inayat Khan: An unsung hero of WWII. They submitted recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs. In the west the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherine's former lover King Stanisaw August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share. [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]. The pair met on the day of Catherines 1762 coup but only became lovers in 1774. Her face was left uncovered, and her fair hand rested on the bed. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress. Army officer Grigory Potemkin was arguably the greatest love of Catherines life, though her relationship with Grigory Orlov, who helped the empress overthrow Peter III, technically lasted longer. Although she mastered the language, she retained an accent. To the general public, Catherine is perhaps best known for conducting a string of salacious love affairs. [92] The Establishment of the Moscow Foundling Home (Moscow Orphanage) was the first attempt at achieving that goal. On the morning of 5 November 1796 . [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. And so she used her lovers as a means to cement her power. Her hunger for fame centred on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick. This is the real history behind the period comedy. [57] Catherine gave them this new right, but in exchange they could no longer appeal directly to her. After holding more than 200 sittings, the so-called Commission dissolved without getting beyond the realm of theory. As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisors, she refrained from immediately putting them into practice. [CDATA[// >