This omnipotent character had a palace located in the heart of St. Petersburg, situated in a superb park on Vasilievsky Island.
While he waited for a bridge to be constructed for his personal use, Menshikov crossed the Neva in a rowing galley, the interior of which was hung with green velvet. Disembarking on the opposite bank, he would ride in a carriage with a gilded cab, embla«34»
Machinations around the Throne zoned on the doors and the pediment with a princely crown. This masterpiece of craftsmanship and comfort, this heavenly chariot, was drawn by six horses harnessed in purple velvet, embroidered in gold and silver. Many heralds preceded Menshikov’s every move about town. Two pages on horseback followed, two gentlemen of the court bounced along at the carriage doors, and six dragoons closed the parade and chased away the curious.1 Nobody else in the capital surrounded his activities with such magnificence.
Peter suffered in silence from this ostentation that was putting the true tsar more in the shade with every passing day, so that even the people apparently no longer thought of him. To cap it all off, Menshikov waited until the emperor had taken his oath before the Guard to announce that, from now on, as a security measure, His Majesty would reside not at the Winter Palace but in his own palace, on Vasilievsky Island. Everyone was stunned to see the tsar thus placed “under the bell,” but no one spoke up to protest. The principal opponents, Tolstoy, Devier and Golovkin, already had been exiled by the new master of Russia.
Having installed Peter - superbly, it is true - in his own residence, Menshikov kept close watch over the company he kept.
The barricades that he placed at the doors of the imperial apartments were insuperable. Only the tsar’s aunts, Anna and Elizabeth, his sister Natalya and a few trusted friends were allowed to visit him. Among the latter were the vice-chancellor Andrei Ivanovich Ostermann, the engineer and general Burkhard Christoph von Munnich (master of so many great works), Count Reinhold Loewenwolde (a former lover of Catherine I and paid agent of the duchess of Courland), the Scottish General Lascy (who was working for Russia and managed to stay out of trouble during the disorder that came on the heels of the empress’s death), and finally and inevitably, the incorrigible Duke Charles Frederick of
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Terrible Tsarinas Holstein, still haunted by the idea of returning Schleswig to the family holdings. Menshikov had indoctrinated them, and bribed them to prepare his future son-in-law to be an emperor only in name and to give up the conduct of affairs to him, definitively.
Entrusting to them the education of this unreasonable and impulsive teenager, all he asked of them was to engender in him a taste for appearances rather than a taste for actions. For Menshikov, the ideal son-in-law would be a paragon of nullity and good manners. What did it matter if he were an ignoramus, if he had no concept of politics, as long as he knew how to conduct himself in the salon? Orders were given to His Majesty’s entourage to keep him informed on matters superficially, but absolutely not indepth. However, while the majority of the mentors chosen by Menshikov acceded to this instruction, the most cunning and most wily among the group had already begun to throw a wrench into the works.
Menshikov thought he had won the day; but meanwhile, the Westphalian Ostermann was gathering around him those who were most aggravated by the new dictator’s vanity and arrogance.
For a long time, they had observed Peter’s mute hostility towards his virtual father-in-law, and they secretly supported their sovereign’s cause. They were soon joined in their conspiracy by Peter’s sister Natalya and by the two aunts, Anna and Elizabeth. When the instigators of this little tribal conspiracy urged him to join them, Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein also acknowledged that he would fight for the emancipation of Peter II, especially if that might be accompanied by a recognition of his own rights to Schleswig and - of course - to Sweden. Coincidentally, Elizabeth had just become engaged to another descendant of Holstein, Charles Augustus, first cousin of Charles Frederick, a candidate for the throne of Courland and bishop of Lubeck. This circumstance could only reinforce the Holstein clan’s determination to
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Machinations around the Throne shake off the yoke of Menshikov and to liberate Peter II from a humiliating guardianship.
Alas! June 1, 1727, the young bishop Charles Augustus was carried off by smallplox. Overnight, Elizabeth found herself with no suitor, no more marital hopes. After Louis XV balked, she now had lost another pretender - less prestigious, certainly, than the King of France, but a very honorable match for a Russian grand duchess. Really, fate seemed dead set against her dreams of marriage. She lost heart, took a strong dislike to the court of St. Petersburg and withdrew, with her putative brother-in-law Charles Frederick and her sister Anna, to the palace of Ekaterinhof, at the edge of St. Petersburg, under the shade trees of an immense park surrounded by canals. In this idyllic setting, she relied very much upon the affection of her close relations to help her ease her disappointment.
The very same day of their departure, Menshikov gave an extravagant feast at his palace in honor of the betrothal of his elder daughter, Maria, to the young Tsar Peter II. The intended, bedecked and bejeweled like a gilded coffer, received on this occasion the title of Her Most Serene Highness and the guarantee of an annual income of 34,000 rubles from the State Treasury. More parsimonious when it came to compensating the Tsarevna2 Elizabeth, Menshikov only allocated 12,000 rubles to her to assuage the rigor of her mourning.3 But Elizabeth wanted to be seen by one and all as an inconsolable fiancee. The fact that she was not yet married (by the age of 18), and that only the most ambitious seemed interested in her - and only out of political considerations - was too cruel a fate to be swallowed anytime soon. Fortunately, her friends immediately set about finding a high-quality substitute for Charles Augustus, in Russia or abroad. The dear departed’s coffin had hardly been laid in the ground in Lubeck when the possible candidature of Charles Adolf of Holstein was
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Terrible Tsarinas suggested - the proper brother of the departed - and also that of Count Maurice of Saxony and several other gentlemen of easily verifiable merits.
While Elizabeth, at Ekaterinhof, was dreaming over these various parties, whose faces she barely recognized, in the heart of St. Petersburg Menshikov, as ever a practical man, was studying the available bachelors’ relative advantages. In his eyes, the halfwidowed tsarina represented an excellent bargaining chip in the diplomatic negotiations that were underway. But these matrimonial concerns did not make him lose sight of the education of his imperial pupil. Observing that Peter seemed to have become slightly less extravagant recently, he recommended to Ostermann that he step up his struggle against his pupil’s natural idleness by accustoming him to fixed hours, whether they be spent in study or recreation. The Westphalian was assisted in this task by Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky, the “assistant governor”; he often visited the palace with his young son, Prince Ivan, a beautiful, hot-blooded young man of 20 years, elegant and effeminate, who amused His Majesty with his inexhaustible chattering.