Yelizaveta Petrovna (Russian: Елизаве́та (Елисаве́т)
Петро́вна) (December 29, 1709 – January 5, 1762 (New Style); December 18,
1709 – December 25, 1761
(Old Style)), also known as Yelisavet and Elizabeth, was an
Empress of Russia (1741 – 1762) who took the country into the War of Austrian Succession (1740 – 1748) and the Seven
Years' War (1756 – 1763). Her domestic policies allowed the nobles to gain dominance in local government while shortening
their terms of service to the state. She encouraged Lomonosov's establishment of the University of Moscow
and Shuvalov's foundation of the Academy of
Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. She also spent exorbitant sums of money on the
grandiose baroque projects of her favourite architect, Bartolomeo Rastrelli,
particularly in Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo. The
Winter Palace and the Smolny Cathedral remain the chief
monuments of her reign in St Petersburg. Generally, she was one of the best loved
Russian monarchs, because she did not allow Germans in the government and not one person was executed during her reign[citation needed].
Life before becoming Empress
Elizabeth, the second oldest daughter of Peter the Great and Martha Skavronskaya, was born at Kolomenskoye, near
Moscow, on December 18, 1709
(O.S.). As her parents were not yet married at that time, her formal illegitimacy would
be used by political opponents to challenge her right to the throne.
Even as a child she was bright, if not brilliant, but her formal education was both imperfect and desultory. Her father adored
her, but had no leisure to devote to her training, and her mother was too down to earth and illiterate to superintend her formal
studies. She had a French governess, however, and later picked up some Italian, German and Swedish, and could converse in these
languages with more fluency than accuracy. From her earliest years she delighted every one by her extraordinary beauty and
vivacity.
It was Peter's intention to marry his second daughter to the young French king Louis
XV, but the pride of the Bourbons revolted against any such alliance. Other
connubial speculations foundered on the personal dislike of the princess for the various suitors proposed to her, so that on the
death of her mother (May 1727) and the departure to Holstein of her beloved sister
Anne, her only remaining near relation, the princess found herself at the age of
eighteen practically her own mistress.
So long as Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov remained in power, she was
treated with liberality and distinction by the government of her adolescent nephew Peter
II, who was rumoured to be her lover. The Dolgorukovs, who supplanted Menshikov and
hated the memory of Peter the Great, practically banished Peter's daughter from court. Elizabeth had inherited her father's
sensual temperament and, being free from all control, abandoned herself to her appetites without reserve.
While still in her teens, she made a lover of Alexis Shubin, a handsome sergeant in the Semyonovsky Guards regiment, and after his banishment to Siberia
(having previously been relieved of his tongue) by order of the empress Anne, consoled
herself with a handsome young Cossack, Alexis
Razumovski, who, there is good reason to believe, subsequently became her husband.
Palace Revolution of 1741
During the reign of her cousin Anna (1730 – 1740), Elizabeth was gathering support in
the background; but after the death of Empress Anna , the regency of Anna Leopoldovna
with infant Ivan VI was marked by high taxes and economic problems. Such course of
events compelled the indolent but by no means incapable beauty to overthrow the weak and corrupt government. Elizabeth, being the
daughter of Peter the Great enjoyed much support from the Russian people, while the idea seems to have been first suggested to
her by the French ambassador, La Chetardie, who was
plotting to destroy the Austrian influence then dominant at the Russian court. It is a mistake to suppose, however, that La
Chetardie took a leading part in the revolution which placed the daughter of Peter the Great on the Russian throne. As a matter
of fact, beyond lending the tsesarevna 2000 ducats, instead of the 15,000 she demanded of
him, he took no part whatever in the actual coup d'etat which was as great a surprise to him
as to every one else. The merit and glory of that singular affair belong to Elizabeth alone. The fear of being imprisoned in a
convent for the rest of her life was among the determining causes of her irresistible outburst
of energy.
The portrait of Elizabeth as
Venus, painted in the 1710s for the Grand
Peterhof Palace
At midnight on November 25, 1741 (Old
Style))/December 6, 1741 (New Style), with a few personal
friends, including her physician, Armand Lestocq, her chamberlain,
Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov, her future husband, Aleksey Razumovsky, and Alexander and Peter Shuvalov, two of the gentlemen of her household, she drove to the barracks of the
Preobrazhensky Guards regiment, enlisted their sympathies by a stirring speech,
and led them to the Winter Palace, where the regent was reposing in absolute security.
Having on the way thither had all the ministers arrested, she seized the regent and her children in their beds, and summoned all
the notables, civil and ecclesiastical, to her presence. So swiftly and noiselessly indeed had the whole revolution proceeded
that as late as eight o'clock the next morning very few lay people in the city were aware of it.
Thus, at the age of thirty-three, this naturally indolent and self-indulgent woman, with little knowledge and no experience of
affairs, suddenly found herself at the head of a great empire at one of the most critical periods of its existence. Fortunately
for herself, and for Russia, Elizabeth Petrovna, with all her shortcomings, had inherited some of her father's genius for
government. Her usually keen judgment and her diplomatic tact again and again recall Peter the Great. What in her sometimes
seemed irresolution and procrastination, was, most often, a wise suspense of judgment under exceptionally difficult
circumstances; and to this may be added that she was ever ready to sacrifice the prejudices of the woman to the duty of the
sovereign.
Bestuzhev's policies
After abolishing the cabinet council system in favor during the rule of the two Annes, and reconstituting the senate as it had been under Peter the Great, with the chiefs of the departments of state, none of them Germans as
used to be, the first care of the new empress was to compose her quarrel with Sweden. On the
January 23, 1743, direct negotiations between the two powers
were opened at Åbo (Turku), and on the August 7,
1743 (the Treaty of Åbo), Sweden ceded to Russia all the
southern part of Finland east of the river Kymmene, which thus became the boundary between the
two states, including the fortresses of Villmanstrand and Fredricshamn.
This triumphant issue was mainly due to the diplomatic ability of the new vice chancellor, Aleksey Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin, whom Elizabeth, much as she disliked him
personally, had wisely placed at the head of foreign affairs immediately after her accession. He represented the
anti-Franco-Prussian portion of her council, and his object was to bring about an Anglo-Austro-Russian alliance which, at that
time, was undoubtedly Russia's proper system. Hence the bogus Lopukhina Conspiracy and
other attempts of Frederick the Great and Louis XV to get rid of Bestuzhev, which made the Russian court during the earlier years of Elizabeths
reign the centre of a tangle of intrigue impossible to unravel by those who do not possess the clue to it.
Promenade of Elizaveta Petrovna through the streets of St Petersburg (1903), watercolour by
Alexandre Benois.
Ultimately, however, the minister, strong in the support of Elizabeth, prevailed, and his faultless diplomacy, backed by the
despatch of an auxiliary Russian corps of 30,000 men to the Rhine, greatly accelerated the peace
negotiations which led to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
(October 18, 1748). By sheer tenacity of purpose, Bestuzhev had
extricated his country from the Swedish imbroglio; reconciled his imperial mistress with the courts of Vienna and London, her natural allies; enabled Russia to assert
herself effectually in Poland, Turkey and Sweden, and isolated
the restless king of Prussia by environing him with hostile alliances. But all this would
have been impossible but for the steady support of Elizabeth, who trusted him implicitly, despite the insinuations of the
chancellor's innumerable enemies, most of whom were her personal friends.
Seven Years' War
The great event of Elizabeth's later years was the Seven Years' War. Elizabeth
regarded the treaty of Westminster (January 16, 1756, whereby
Great Britain and Prussia agreed to unite their forces to oppose the entry into, or the passage through, Germany of the troops of
every foreign power) as utterly subversive of the previous conventions between Great Britain and Russia. And by no means
unwarrantable fear of the king of Prussia, who was to be reduced within proper limits, so that he might be no longer a danger to
the empire, induced Elizabeth to accede to the treaty of Versailles, in other words the Franco-Austrian league against Prussia,
and on the May 17, 1757 the Russian army, 85,000 strong, advanced
against Königsberg.
Neither the serious illness of the empress, which began with a fainting-fit at Tsarskoe
Selo (September 19, 1757), nor the fall of Bestuzhev
(February 21, 1758), nor the cabals and intrigues of the
various foreign powers at St Petersburg, interfered with the progress of the war, and
the crushing defeat of Kunersdorf (August 12,
1759) at last brought Frederick to the verge of ruin. From that day forth he despaired of success,
though he was saved for the moment by the jealousies of the Russian and Austrian commanders, which ruined the military plans of
the allies.
On the other hand, it is not too much to say that, from the end of 1759 to the end of 1761, the unshakable firmness of the
Russian empress was the one constraining political force which held together the heterogeneous, incessantly jarring elements of
the anti-Prussian combination. From the Russian point of view, Elizabeth's greatness as a stateswoman consists in her steady
appreciation of Russian interests, and her determination to promote them at all hazards. She insisted throughout that the king of
Prussia must be rendered harmless to his neighbors for the future, and that the only way to bring this about was to reduce him to
the rank of a Prince-elector.
Frederick himself was quite alive to his danger. "I'm at the end of my resources", he wrote at the beginning of 1760, "the
continuance of this war means for me utter ruin. Things may drag on perhaps till July, but then a catastrophe must come." On
May 21, 1760 a fresh convention was signed between Russia and
Austria, a secret clause of which, never communicated to the court of Versailles, guaranteed
East Prussia to Russia, as an indemnity for war expenses. The failure of the campaign of
1760, wielded by the inept Count Buturlin, induced the court of Versailles, on the
evening of January 22, 1761, to present to the court of St
Petersburg a despatch to the effect that the king of France by reason of the condition of his dominions absolutely desired peace.
The Russian empress's reply was delivered to the two ambassadors on February 12. It was
inspired by the most uncompromising hostility towards the king of Prussia. Elizabeth would not consent to any pacific overtures
until the original object of the league had been accomplished.
Simultaneously, Elizabeth caused to be conveyed to Louis XV a confidential letter in which she proposed the signature of a new
treaty of alliance of a more comprehensive and explicit nature than the preceding treaties between the two powers, without the
knowledge of Austria. Elizabeth's object in this mysterious negotiation seems to have been to reconcile France and Great Britain,
in return for which signal service France was to throw all her forces into the German war. This project, which lacked neither
ability nor audacity, foundered upon Louis XV's invincible jealousy of the growth of Russian influence in eastern Europe and his
fear of offending the Porte. It was finally arranged by the allies that their envoys at
Paris should fix the date for the assembling of a peace congress, and that, in the
meantime, the war against Prussia should be vigorously prosecuted.
The campaign of 1761 was almost as abortive as the campaign of 1760. Frederick acted on the defensive with consummate skill,
and the capture of the Prussian fortress of Kolberg on Christmas day 1761, by Rumyantsev, was the sole Russian success. Frederick, however, was now at the last gasp. On January 6, 1762, he wrote to Finkenstein,
"We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from
the avidity of my enemies", which means, if words mean anything, that he was resolved to seek a soldier's death on the first
opportunity. A fortnight later he wrote to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, "The sky begins to clear. Courage, my dear fellow. I
have received the news of a great event." The great event which
snatched him from destruction was the death of the Russian empress (January 5,
1762 (N.S.)).
Elizabeth in popular culture
Empress Elizabeth has appeared numerous times in dramatizations of Catherine II's life. The 1934 film Catherine the Great (based on the
play The Czarina by Lajos Biro and Melchior Lengyel) stars Flora Robson as Elizabeth, and the
1991 TV miniseries Young Catherine features Vanessa Redgrave in the role.
Jeanne Moreau portrayed Elizabeth in the 1995
television movie Catherine the
Great. She is also a major character in several episodes of the Japanese animated series, Le Chevalier D'Eon.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Elizabeth of Russia |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
Petrovna, Yelizaveta; Elisaveta, Empress of Russia |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Empress of Russia |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
December 29, 1709 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Kolomenskoye |
| DATE OF DEATH |
December 18, 1709 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
|
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