However, on October 16, 1740, the tsarina took a turn for the better. She called in her old favorite and, with a trembling hand, gave him the signed document. Finally, Buhren could breathe again - and with him, all those in the close band who had contributed to this victory in extremis. The new regent’s partisans hoped that their efforts, more or less spontaneous, would be repaid before long, While Her Majesty was on her death bed, they counted the days and calculated the coming rewards. The priest was called in, and the prayer for the dying was said. Lulled by the chanting, she cast her eye about and, in her distress, recognized through her fog the tall silhouette of Munnich among those in attendance. She smiled to him as if beseeching his protection for the one who would one day be taking her place on the throne of Russia, and murmured, “Good-bye, Field Marshal!” Later, she added, “Good-bye, everyone!” These were her last words. She slipped into a coma on October 28, 1740.
At the announcement of her death, Russia shook off a nightmare. But around the palace, the expectation was that the nation might be falling into an even blacker horror. The imperial court was unanimous in its opinion that, with a nine-month-old tsar still in his crib and a regent of German origin (who could express himself in Russian only reluctantly and whose principal concern *Vasily Lukich Dolgoruky, for one, was executed in the wake of that event.
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The Extravagant Anna was to destroy the country’s noblest families), the empire was heading straight for a catastrophe.
The day after Anna Ivanovna’s death, Buhren became regent by the grace of the recently departed, with a baby as his mascot and as the living guarantee of his rights. He immediately set himself to clearing the ground around him. In his view, the first essential move would be to get rid of Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich, little Ivan’s parents. If he could send them far enough from the capital - and why not abroad? - he would have his free hands until the imperial brat attained his majority. Studying the new political aspect of Russia, Baron Axel of Mardefeld, Prussian Minister to St. Petersburg, summarized his opinion on the future of the country in a dispatch to his sovereign Frederick II, saying: “Seventeen years of despotism [the legal duration of the minority of the tsar] and a nine-month-old child who, by the way, could die, yielding the throne to the regent.”8 Mardefeld’s letter is dated October 29, 1740, the day following the death of the tsarina. Less than a week later, events suddenly took a turn in a direction that the diplomat had not foreseen. Despite the future tsar Ivan VI’s being transferred to the Winter Palace amid great pomp and celebration, in an extravagant ceremony followed by all the courtiers swearing their oath and kissing the hand of the regent, his enemies had not given up.
The new English minister in St. Petersburg, Edward Finch, declared that the change of reign “has made less noise in Russia than the changing of the Guard in Hyde Park”; but Field Marshal Munnich warned Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich against the tortuous machinations of Buhren, who he suggested was intending to throw them both out in order to keep himself in power.
Even though he had been allied with the regent in the very recent past, he said that he felt morally obliged to prevent him from going any further to the detriment of the legitimate rights of the
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Terrible Tsarinas family. According to him, for his next coup d’etat, the ex-favorite of the late empress Anna Ivanovna was counting on the Ismailovsky Regiment and the horse guard, one of which was under the command of his brother Gustav, the other under his son. But the Preobrazhensky Regiment was entirely at the behest of the field marshal and this elite unit would be disposed to act, at the proper time, against the ambitious Buhren. “If Your Highness wishes,” Munnich told the princess, “I would relieve you of this treacherous man in one hour.”9 However, Anna Leopoldovna had no stomach for such adventures. Frightened at the thought of attacking a man as powerful and cunning as Buhren, she balked. However, having consulted her husband, she changed her mind and decided, while some trembling, to play all or nothing. During the night of November 8, 1740, a hundred grenadiers and three officers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, sent by Munnich, burst into the room where Buhren was sleeping; they yanked him out of bed and, despite his cries for help, they beat him with their rifle butts and carried him out, semi-conscious, to an enclosed carriage. In the wee hours of the day, he was transported to the Schlusselburg Fortress on Lake Ladoga, where he was methodically whipped.
They needed a charge that could be substantiated before they could have him imprisoned, so he was accused of precipitating the death of the empress by having her ride on horseback at the wrong time. Other crimes, added to this one at the appropriate time, were enough to have him condemned to death on April 8, 1741. First, he was to be drawn and quartered, but his sentence was commuted immediately to exile in perpetuity to a remote village in Siberia; and in one fell swoop, Anna Leopoldovna was proclaimed regent.
To celebrate the happy end of this period of intrigues, usurpations and treason, she rescinded the preceding government’s
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The Extravagant Anna ban on soldiers’ and warrant officers’ visiting cabarets. This first liberal measure was greeted by an outburst of joy in the barracks - and in the bars. Everyone hoped this was a sign of broader leniency in general. The name of the new regent was blessed everywhere and, with hers, that of the man who had just brought her to power. Only the mean-spirited happened to notice that Buhren was being replaced by Munnich. One German was taking the place of another, without any concern for Muscovite tradition. How long would the empire have to endure a foreign master? And why was it always a member of the weaker sex that came to occupy the throne? Was there no other choice for Russia but to be ruled by an empress, with Germans at her back, whispering in her ear? Sad as it may be for a country to smother under a woman’s skirts, how much worse it is when that woman herself is under the influence of a foreigner. The most pessimistic observers reckoned that Russia would be threatened with a double calamity as a long as real men and real Russians did not stand up against the reign of besotted sovereigns and German lovers. These prophets of gloom saw the matriarchy and the Prussian takeover as two facets of a curse that had befallen the fatherland since the demise of Peter the Great.
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Terrible Tsarinas
Footnotes 1. The “Frenchified” version of his name, plus a pejorative ending, was used to indicate the excesses committed by Buhren and his clique.
2. Ancestor of Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor.” 3. His great-grandson Dmitri Miliutin, War Minister under Alexander II, would retain these evocative emblems on his blazon.
4. Cf. Brian-Chaninov, op. cit.
5. Cf. Kraft: Description de la maison de glace, and K. Waliszewski, op. cit.
6. Cf. Daria Oliver, op. cit.
7. Letter dated 10 December 1740, cited by K. Waliszewski, op. cit.
8. Cf. Brian-Chaninov, op. cit.
9. Comments reported in K. Waliszewski, op. cit.
Still dazed by her sudden accession to power, Anna Leopoldovna was not so much interested in her political triumph as in the return to St. Petersburg of her last lover, whom the tsarina thought she had skillfully removed from the picture by marrying Anna to the insipid Anthony Ulrich. As soon as the coast was clear, the count of Lynar returned, ready for the most exciting adventures. Casting her eyes upon him once again, she fell under his spell instantly. He hadn’t changed a bit in the months of separation. At the age of 40, he looked barely 30. Tall and slender, with a fine complexion and sparkling eyes, he always wore clothes in soft colors - sky blue, apricot or lilac - and used plenty of French perfumes and a pomade to keep his hands soft. They said he was an Adonis in his prime, or a Narcissus who never aged.