Catherine now entered the most dangerous crisis of her life as Grand Duchess. After a victory over Prussia on 19/30 August 1757 at the Battle of Gross-Jagersdorf, Field-Marshal Apraxin, with whom Catherine was friendly, heard that the Empress Elisabeth had fallen ill. He let the Prussians retreat in good order and withdrew his own armies, probably believing the Empress was about to die and Peter III would make peace with his hero, Frederick the Great. The Empress did not die and, like all tyrants, she was extremely sensitive about her mortality. In wartime, such thoughts were treasonable. The pro-English party was destroyed and Catherine found herself under grave suspicion, especially after her terrified husband denounced her. The Grand
Duchess was alone and in real danger. She burned her papers, waited - and then played her hand with cool, masterly skill.14
Catherine provoked a showdown: on 13 April 1758, as she recounted in her Memoirs, she demanded to go home to her mother, exploiting Elisabeth's fondness for her and growing disgust for her nephew. The Empress decided to interrogate Catherine personally. In a scene of Byzantine drama, Catherine argued her case to the Empress while Peter grunted denunciations. She used charm, wide-eyed indignation and her usual display of loving gratitude to disarm the Empress. When they parted, Elisabeth whispered: T have many more things to say to you .. .'.T5 Catherine knew she had won and was especially cheered to hear from a maid that Elisabeth was repelled by Peter: 'My nephew is a monster.'16 When the dust settled, Catherine and Peter managed to coexist quite cordially. Peter had taken a famously plain mistress named Elisabeth Vorontsova, the Chancellor's niece, and so he tolerated Catherine's liaison with Poniatowski, who had returned for a while. Finally, the Pole, who still loved Catherine, had to leave and she was alone again.
Two years later, Catherine noticed Grigory Orlov, a lieutenant of the Izmailovsky Guards who, after distinguishing himself by taking three wounds from the Prussians at the Battle of Zorndorf, had returned to Petersburg charged with guarding a noble Prussian prisoner-of-war, Count Schwerin. Peter, who worshipped all things Prussian, flaunted his friendship with Schwerin. This was probably how Catherine came to know Orlov, though legend claims she first admired him on guard duty from her window.
Grigory Grigorevich Orlov was handsome, tall and blessed, wrote an English diplomat, with 'every advantage of figure, countenance and manner'.17 Orlov came of a race of giants[10] - all five brothers were equally gargantuan.18 His face was said to be angelic, but he was also the sort of cheerful bluff soldier everyone loved - 'he was a simple and straightforward man without pretensions, affable, popular, good-humoured and honest. He never did an unkindness to anyone'19 - and was immensely strong.20 When Orlov visited London fifteen years later, Horace Walpole caught something of his oversized charm: 'Orlov the Great or rather the Big is here ... he dances gigantic dances and makes gigantic love.'2It
Orlov was the son of a provincial governor and not of wealthy higher nobility. He was descended from a Streltsy officer who was sentenced to beheading by Peter the Great. When it was his turn to die, Orlov's grandfather stepped up to the reeking block and kicked the head of the man before him out of the way. The Tsar was so impressed with his swagger that he pardoned him. Orlov was not particularly clever - 'very handsome', wrote the French envoy Breteuil to his Minister Choiseul in Paris, 'but... very stupid'. On his return in 1759, Orlov was appointed adjutant to Count Peter Shuvalov, Grand Master of Ordnance, the cousin of Potemkin's university patron. Orlov soon managed to seduce Shuvalov's mistress, Princess Elena Kurakina. It was Orlov's luck that Shuvalov died before he could avenge himself.
Early in 1761, Catherine and Orlov fell in love. After the slightly precious sincerity of Poniatowski, Grigory Orlov provided physical vigour, bearlike kindness and, more importantly, the political muscle that would soon be needed. As early as 1749, Catherine had been able to offer her husband the support of those Guards officers who were devoted to her. Now she received the support of the Orlov brothers and their merry band. The most impressive in terms of ability and ruthlessness was Grigory's brother Alexei. He closely resembled Grigory, except that he was scar-faced and of 'brute force and no heart', the qualities that made the Orlovs such an effective force in 1761.22
Orlov and his fellow Guardsmen discussed various daring plans to raise Catherine to the throne in late 1761 - though probably in the vaguest terms. The precise order of events is obscure but it was also around this time that young Potemkin first came into contact with the Orlovs. One source recalled that it was Potemkin's reputation as a wit that attracted the attention of Grigory Orlov, though they shared other interests too - both were known as successful seducers and daring gamblers. They never became friends exactly, but Potemkin now moved in the same galaxy.23
Catherine needed such allies. In the last months of Elisabeth's life, she was under no illusions about Grand Duke Peter, who talked openly of divorcing Catherine, marrying his mistress Vorontsova and reversing Russia's alliances to save his hero Frederick of Prussia. Peter was a danger to her, her son, her country - and himself. She saw her choices starkly:
Primo - to share His Highness's fate, whatever it might be; Secundo - to be exposed at any moment to anything he might undertake for, or against, me; Tertio - to take a route independent of any such eventuality ... it was a matter of either perishing with (or because of) him, or else saving myself, the children, and perhaps the State, from the wreckage...
Just at the moment that Elisabeth began her terminal decline and Catherine needed to be ready to save herself 'from the wreckage' and lead a possible coup, the Grand Duchess discovered that she was pregnant by Grigory Orlov. She carefully concealed her belly, but, politically, she was hors de combat.
At 4 p.m. on the afternoon of 25 December 1761, the Empress Elisabeth, now fifty, had become so weak that she no longer had the strength to vomit blood. She just lay writhing on her bed, her breathing slow and rasping, her limbs swollen like balloons, half filled with fluid, in the imperial apartments of the unfinished, Baroque Winter Palace in St Petersburg. The courtiers, bristling with hope and fear of what her death would bring them, were gathered around her. The death of a ruling monarch was even more public than a royal birth: it was a formal occasion with its own etiquette, because the demise of the Empress was the passing of sacred power. The pungence of sweat, vomit, faeces and urine must have overwhelmed the sweetness of candles, the perfume of the ladies and the vodka breath of the men. Elisabeth's personal priest was praying, but she no longer recited with him.24
The succession of the spindly, pockmarked Grand Duke Peter, now thirty- four and ever more uncomfortable with Russian culture and people, was accepted, though hardly with jubilance. There was already an undercurrent of anxiety about Peter and hope about Catherine. Many of the magnates knew the Heir was patently ill-suited to his new role. They had to make the appropriate calculations for their careers and families, but the key to survival was always silence, patience and vigilance.
Outside the Palace, the Guards stood sentry duty in the freezing cold, tensely observing the transfer of power, proudly aware of their own role in raising and breaking tsars. The will to act existed especially among the daredevils around the Orlovs, who included Potemkin. However, Catherine's relationship with Orlov, and especially the tightly guarded secret that she was six months pregnant, was known only to the inner circle. It was hard enough for private individuals to conceal pregnancy, yet alone imperial princesses. Catherine managed it even in the crowded sickroom of a dying empress.