1 Catherine wrote “sollicisme” (correctly, solécisme) instead of “syllogisme.” A solecism is, ironically, an incorrect form or usage. A syllogism is a logical statement with a major and minor premise and a conclusion.
2 In 1725, Anna (1708–28), by his second wife, Catherine I (1684–1727), the daughter of Peter I, “the Great” (1672–1725), married Karl Friedrich (1700–39), Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, heir to the Swedish throne. Peter III was born on February 21 (N.S.), and his mother died on May 15, 1728 (N.S.).
3 F. W. von Bergholz’s Journal of Kamerjunker Bergholz, written by him in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great from 1721 to 1725 was first published in Anton Friedrich Büsching’s Magazin für die neue Historie und Geographie, v. XIX–XXII (Halle, 1785–87).
4 In August 1743, the Treaty of Åbo ended a war begun by Sweden in July 1741 during the succession struggle after Empress Anna’s death in 1740. Under the guise of supporting Empress Elizabeth during her coup, Sweden hoped to regain Baltic territory lost to Russia in the Treaty of Nystadt (1721). However, Elizabeth attacked, taking part of Finland, which she ceded in the Treaty of Åbo in exchange for naming her candidate to the Swedish throne. Adolf Friedrich (born 1710), prince-bishop of Lübeck (1727–50) and king of Sweden (1751–71), was Catherine’s maternal uncle. In 1750 in a letter, Catherine secretly reassured her mother that “the interests of my dear uncle are mine.” SIRIO 1 (1871): 72.
5 Karl Adlerfelt translated into French and published a journal by his father, Gustavus Adlerfelt (1671–1709), chamberlain to Charles XII (1682–1718). Histoire militaire de Charles XII, roi de Suède: depuis l’an 1700, jusqu’à la bataille de Pultowa en 1709, 4 vol. (Amsterdam, 1740).
6 Catherine crossed out the following: “He did not have an entirely bad heart, but a weak man usually does not” (750). In her early memoir, Catherine wrote that in 1739, “there for the first time I saw the Grand Duke, who truly was handsome, amiable, and well mannered; indeed, they hailed this eleven-year-old child, whose father had just died, as a miracle” (443). Catherine first mentions wine in part 1 of the middle memoir, in a later addition possibly made in 1790–91 (see introduction) (20).
7 Dragoon guards were mounted infantry.
8; Elizabeth I (Dec. 18, 1709 to Dec. 25, 1761) succeeded Ivan VI on November 25, 1741; her coronation was on April 25, 1742.
9 The Greek or Russian Orthodox faith became the official religion in Russia in 982. Although Peter the Great had put the Church under the administrative control of the government in a process of secularization that continued throughout the eighteenth century, the royal family carefully observed church fasts, rituals, and holidays.
10 Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin (1718–83) became ambassador to Denmark in 1747 before moving to Sweden for twelve years; in 1760 he became governor to Catherine’s son, Grand Duke Paul, and in 1762, a senior member of the College of Foreign Affairs. He opposed Catherine’s coup, supporting instead her son Paul for the throne. In a humorous piece, Catherine wrote that Panin would die “if he ever hurries” (653).
11 Elizabeth’s fiancé was Karl August, Prince of Holstein-Gottorp (1706–27), Catherine’s maternal uncle.
12 He converted on November 7, 1742.
13 The wife of Prince Ludwig-Wilhelm of Hessen-Hamburg was Anastasia Ivanovna Trubetskaia (1700–55), whose mother was Irina Grigorevna Naryshkina (1669–1749), second cousin of Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina, Peter the Great’s mother.
14 Baron Ivan Antonovich Cherkasov (1692–1758), father of Baron Alexander Ivanovich Cherkasov, to whom Catherine dedicated part 2 of her middle memoir.
15 Catherine’s maternal and Peter’s paternal grandfathers, Christian August (1673–1726), Prince Bishop of Lübeck, and Friedrich IV (1671–1702), Duke of Holstein, respectively, were brothers.
16 On August 31, 1743, the Lopukhin family was flogged with the knout and sent to Siberia for an alleged plot against Elizabeth; four, including Natalia Fedorovna Lopukhina (née Balk-Polev), had their tongues cut out. The Lopukhins were the family of Peter I’s first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina.
17 Troitsa (Trinity) Monastery of St. Sergei (1422), 25 miles NE of Moscow, in Zagorsk. ‡ Bloodletting, or phlebotomy, is an ancient medical art that became hugely popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The Greeks thought that the elements of the body were analogous to those of the earth, made up of air, water, earth, and fire, and for centuries it was believed that good health depended on the balance of the four bodily humors: phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood. Purging, starving, vomiting, and bloodletting were used to restore a proper balance.
18 The St. Petersburg Gazette reported that Elizabeth gave her a diamond brooch and earrings worth 50,000–60,000 rubles when Catherine was first bled, and Peter gave her a watch set in diamonds (March 15, 1744) (719).
19 France restored relations with Russia in 1739, and de La Chétardie was the French envoy from 1739 to 1742, when he supported Elizabeth’s coup for the purpose of furthering France’s interests in Russia, which centered on weakening Russia’s alliance with Austria, France’s enemy. De La Chétardie left on June 6, 1744.
20 The celebrations were on July 15, and they departed on July 26, 1744.
21 Catherine writes “Koselsk,” or “Kozelsk” in the Kaluga Gubernia, but means Kozelets, in the Chernogov Gubernia by Kiev, where Elizabeth’s favorite and secret husband, Alexei Razumovsky, had grown up.
22 They arrived in Moscow on September 20, 1744.
23 Under Empress Anna, Elizabeth had her unlimited yearly support cut to 30,000 rubles annually.
24 As Grand Duchess, Catherine outranked Princess Johanna at public ceremonies.
25 December 15, 1744.
26 December 27, 1744.
27 October 8, 1744.
28 The Royal Prince of Sweden Adolf Friedrich married Princess Luise Ulrike (1720–82), sister of Frederick the Great. Count Henning Adolf Gyllenborg (1713–75) was the nephew of the Swedish foreign minister, Karl Gyllenborg.
29 Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (100 A.D., probably in the 1559 French translation by Jasques Amyot, Les vies des hommes illustres comparées l’une avec l’autre par Plutarque), The Character and Conduct of Cicero, considered, from the history of his life, by the Reverend Dr. Middleton (1741, probably in the 1743 French translation by Abbé Prévost, because the German translation by T. J. Dusch appeared only in 1757–59), and Baron de Montesquieu’s (1689–1755) Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline(1734) (Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence).
30 In part 1 of the middle memoir, Catherine writes: “I promised him to read them and actually did look for them; I found the life of Cicero in German and read a couple of pages; then I was brought The Cause of the Grandeur and Decline of the Roman Republic[sic]. When I began to read, it led me to reflect, but I could not read it straight through because it made me yawn, but I said: what a fine book, and tossed it aside to continue getting dressed. I was not able to find Plutarch’s life of illustrious men; I read it only two years later” (61).
31 Dinner is in the afternoon and supper in the evening.
32 Louis Caravaque (1684–1754) lived in Russia (1716–54) and painted numerous portraits of Elizabeth and her family. On Diderot’s recommendation, the sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716–91) came to St. Petersburg (1766–78), where he made the equestrian statue of Peter the Great (named the Bronze Horseman, after Alexander Pushkin’s poem), unveiled in 1782 with the Latin inscription, “To Peter I from Catherine II.”
33 On the heels of the recent war with Sweden, which had concluded with the Treaty of Åbo in 1743, Bestuzhev worked to limit Sweden’s power.
34 Prince August Friedrich (1711–85) arrived in February 1745.
35 Peter attained his majority on June 17, 1745. Charles VII (1697–1745) was the elector of Bavaria (1726–45) and Holy Roman Emperor (1742–45). Francis I (1708–65) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1745 to 1765.
36 Catherine first made this resolution in part 1 of her middle memoir and later in her epitaph (57).
37 Empress Anna’s favorite, Ernst Johann Bühren (Biron), Duke of Courland.
38 Princess Elisabeth (December 17, 1742, to March 3, 1745).
39 July 17, 1745.
40 On her relations with the Empress, Princess Johanna wrote to her husband: “Our farewell was very touching; it was almost impossible to take leave of Her Imperial Majesty, and this great monarch for her part did me the honor of being deeply moved.” But the English Ambassador Hyndford’s dispatch reads: “When she said farewell, she fell at the Empress’s feet and begged her with a burst of tears to forgive her if she had in any way offended Her Majesty. The Empress told her that it was too late to think of that now, and that if she had always been so humble it would have been better for her” (Anthony, 158–59).
41 Anastasia Mikhailovna Izmailova (née Naryshkina) was lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth.
42 Ekaterina Alexeevna Karr married Prince Peter Mikhailovich Golitsyn.
43 Catherine began part 2 of her middle memoir with a similar discussion. ‡ The Great Fast lasts seven weeks before Easter, the holiest holiday, and is regularly observed by most people. The other major fasts are the six-week Christmas fast, the St. Peter’s fast (from May 31 to June 29), and the Assumption fast (from August 1 to 15). Meat and dairy were forbidden, while fish, vegetables, and bread were allowed. No marriages were performed during fasts. Elizabeth was religious, while Catherine observed Church rituals but was not religious.
44 Called a hermitage table in part 2 of the middle memoir (83).
45 According to part 2 of the middle memoir, Catherine looked once to please Peter (83).
46 At this time, Elizabeth lived under the threat of being sent to a convent.
47 Alexei escaped to Austria, from where Peter the Great had him lured back to Russia and imprisoned, where he was tortured, and died.
48 In part 2 of the middle memoir, Catherine explains that Brümmer wants her to speak to Elizabeth on his behalf (80–81).
49 In classical mythology, Juno charges Argus, a giant with one hundred eyes, to guard Io.
50 Madame Choglokova (née Countess Hendrikova) was the daughter of Elizabeth’s maternal aunt Kristina Skavronskaia.
51 The Russian name for Tallinn, Estonia; Reval in German.
52 A verst is .66 miles, about one kilometer.
53 Countess Mavra Egorovna Shuvalova (née Shepeleva) was the first wife of Count Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov.
54 The secret articles of the Treaty of May 1746 between Russia and Austria committed them to fight together against Prussia and Turkey.
55 They returned to St. Petersburg on July 30, 1746.
56 Tiran the Fair was a knight-errant of the kind mocked by Cervantes in Don Quixote, originally Tirant lo Blach by Mossen Johanot Matorell (Valencia, 1490). Catherine may have read a French imitation by Count A. Cl. de Caylus, Histoire du vaillant chevalier Tiran le Blanc (London, Paris, 1737).
57 The letters of Madame de Sévigné (1629–96), especially to her daughter, were prized for their simple and natural tone, and for the vividness with which they evoked the glory of the seventeenth-century court of Louis XIV.
58 In September 1763, Catherine wrote Voltaire: “From the time that I could do what I liked until 1746, I read only novels. By chance, [your] works fell into my hands. I could not stop reading them. . . . I always returned to the first mainspring of my taste and of my most valued enjoyment, and assuredly, if I have any knowledge, it is to [you] alone that I owe it” (Besterman no. 10597).
59 He died March 16, 1747.
60 The 30,000 troops under Repnin ensured the successful peace negotiations at Aachen to end the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), which involved all the major powers.
61 An arshin is twenty-eight inches.
62 Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de (d. 1614), Mémoires des messire Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, contenans les anecdotes de la cour de France, sous les rois Henry II, François II, Henry III & IV, touchant les duels (1665); Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe (1605–71), Histoire du roi Henri le Grand (1661).
63 She was the sisters’ French governess.
64 Count Armand Lestocq’s wedding was on November 11, 1747. The order for his arrest was given November 13, 1748; he was taken to the fortress November 17, tortured November 23, had his property confiscated November 24, and was convicted on November 29 to exile, though he remained in the fortress until 1753, when he was sent to Velikii Ustiug.
65 Father Joseph Barre (1692–1764), Histoire générale d’Allemagne (1748), 10 vols. Dacier’s Oeuvres de Platon traduites de grec en français, avec des remarques et la vie de ce philosophe, 2 vols. (1699, 1744).
66 May 22, 1749.
67 June 21, 1749.
68 He married Ekatarina Ivanovna Naryshkina on October 27, 1746. † Herpes.
69 September 17, 1749.
70 October 8, 1749.
71 Praskovia Ivanovna Shuvalova married Prince Nikolai Fedorovich Golitsyn.
72 In part 3 of her middle memoir, dated 1791, Catherine writes that she sent Baturin to Kamchatka in 1770, and that Beniovsky and his followers deserved to hang (167). She evidently did not know that Baturin had died in 1772. However, in 1773 she pardoned Beniovsky and his followers, allowing them to return to Russia. In a letter to Procurator General Prince Viazemsky (October 2, 1773), she explains that their request to return “shows how the Russian loves his Russia, and their trust in me and my mercy has touched my heart” (quoted in Böhme 2:102). This internal evidence indicates that parts 2 and 3 of the middle memoir, the so-called 1791 memoir, were written after part 1 (dated 1771), finished before October 1773, and only edited in 1791 (ix).
73 Her brothers were Peter and Karl Ernst.
74 February 17, 1750.
75 A white heavy powder used in medical ointments for burns.
76 Count Lynar arrived February 7, 1750.
77 By 1751, he had ten children, and eventually he had twelve.
78 Count Moritz Karl Lynar was the favorite of Anna Leopoldovna, regent (1740–41) for Ivan VI.
79 April 30, 1750.
80 As Catherine points out in part 3 of the middle memoir, “That meant that the Empress did not wish to have us as close to her apartment as we had been before” (181).
81 June 6, 1750.
82 September 17, 1750.
83 Praskovia Fedorovna Saltykova was married to Ivan V, Peter I’s half brother and co-ruler until Ivan’s death. Biron’s father, Karl Bühren, was a cornet in the Polish army.
84 Born 1716.
85 April 30 to June 8, 1751.
86 Lev Alexandrovich Naryshkin’s brother was Alexander, whose wife was Anna Nikitichna (née Rumiantseva); his sisters were Natalia, Maria, and Agrafena.
87 Natalia died in 1760.
88 Actually, November 2, 1751.
89 During and after the coup, she entrusted her son Paul to him.
90 Three of her sons ended up in prison.
91 From “Madame Choglokova replied” to “exist. Then” left out of the Russian Academy edition (1907) of Catherine’s works.
92 July 30, 1752.
93 October 20, 1752.
94 They actually departed on December 16 and arrived on December 20, 1752.
95 From “Meanwhile, Madame Choglokova” to “after Easter” left out of the Russian Academy edition (1907) of Catherine’s works.
96 Journal of the Court Quartermasters, 1753: “April 29. Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess deigned to be absent because of illness.”
97 To drill a hole in the skull to relieve pressure.
98 Nomad’s tent or covered wagon.
99 This was the practice of members of the religious sect called Skoptsy.
100 Shah-Nadir (1688–1747), Shah of Persia (r. 1736–47), known as the Persian Napoleon or the Second Alexander, served Tahmasp II (1704–40) and took the name Tahmasp Kuli Khan, or “Tahmasp’s slave.”
101 Dictionnaire historique et critique 2 vol. (1697) by Pierre Bayle (1647–1706); 8 ed., 4 vol. (Amsterdam, 1740).
102 Journal of the Court Quartermaster, 1754: “September 20. Toward morning Her Imperial Highness Her Majesty Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna successfully gave birth. God has sent His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Paul Petrovich. In the eleventh hour, in the presence of Her Imperial Majesty, Grand Duke Paul Petrovich was brought from the chambers of Their Imperial Highnesses to the inner chambers of Her Imperial Majesty, and the successful birth is announced to the whole court through the raising of banners in the city and cannonades from all fortresses” (728).
103 In a dispatch from July 27, 1757, L’Hôpital notes “the love of the Empress for the son of the Grand Duchess, which they say belongs to Monsieur Saltykov” (quoted in Böhme 2:177).
104 November 6, 1754.
105 A religious ceremony held to celebrate the end of a woman’s confinement.
106 Journal of the Court Quartermaster, 1754: “November 1. Tuesday, Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess, on the occasion of the six weeks since Her Highness successfully gave birth, while seated on her bed, deigned to accept the humble congratulations of resident distinguished persons of both sexes, from ambassadors and other foreign ministers of the second rank” (728).
107 Voltaire’s Annales de l’Empire depuis Charlemagne, 2 vols. (1753), Abrégé de l’Histoire universelle depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Charles V, 2 vol. (1753), and Histoire universelle, 2 vol. (Paris, 1754); Essai sur l’histoire universelle, or in its final form, Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (1769); in 1765 he published the introduction separately as La philosophie de l’histoire, par feu l’Abbé Bazin, which he dedicated to Catherine. Catherine was reading Barre’s History of Germany in 1749 too.
108 Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), Secular and Ecclesiastical History (1588–1607), Annales ecclesiastici, in Russian translation Deianiia tserkovnye i grazhdanskie ot r. Khr. do XIII stoletii (1719) (in Böhme 2:184).
109; Montesquieu, L’esprit des lois (1748) and Publius Cornelius Tacitus (55–117), The Annals (109 A.D.), an important 100-year history of Rome, beginning with Caesar Augustus.
110 A trumeau is a mirror having a painted or carved panel above or below the glass in the same frame.
111 The three days before Ash Wednesday, once a time of confession and absolution.
112 In 1760, Catherine made notes about this visit: “At the end of 1754, seeing that his affairs were in a state that threatened widespread bankruptcy, the Grand Duke decided to give me the task of putting things in order. At first I did not want to take this on, foreseeing the difficulty of remedying this hopeless situation, as well as the jealousy and envy that this would earn me, but I finally decided to agree to it; I could no longer refuse without offending the Grand Duke.” She takes us through his accounts. “I then put into writing all of Brockdorff ’s contradictory actions for and against the Shuvalovs, his accusations, and I gave this text to the Grand Duke. Brockdorff induced his master to reveal its contents to Count Alexander Shuvalov, who, trusting Brockdorff, believed me the author of everything against the Shuvalovs. They detested Chancellor Bestuzhev; these suspicions, and the fear that my relations with him might become harmful to them one day, hastened his fall. At that time they could not imagine that a consistent policy was the product of a woman’s mind, that this woman already had all of the small and great affairs of her husband in hand, that this woman would not tolerate any embezzlement, insinuations, injustice, etc.” (621–24)
113 May 23, 1755.
114 The opposite is probably true. With his toy soldiers and play regiments, Peter III followed the practice of Peter the Great, who as a young man had toy boats and regiments at his estate outside Moscow in Kolomenskoe.
115 Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams arrived June 12, 1755, and Count Stanislaw Poniatowski arrived at the end of the month.
116 November 10, 1755.
117 On January 16, 1756, in a surprise move, Frederick the Great signed the Whitehall Treaty with England, and on May 1, 1756, his spurned ally France signed the Versailles Treaty with Austria, which, by the end of the year, Russia signed too. The war began with Frederick the Great’s invasion of Saxony on August 18, 1756.
118 Count Andrei Alekseevich Bestuzhev-Riumin married Evdokia Danilovna Razumovkaia on May 5, 1747.
119 His daughter is Princess Elena Stepanovna Kurakina.
120 His son-in-law was Count Gavril Ivanovich Golovkin.
121 Duchess Albertine Friederike von Holstein-Gottorp died on December 22, 1755. Defeated by Russia in the Great Northern War (1700–21), Sweden retreated militarily, until in a backlash in the 1730s, Swedish nobles (the Hats) accepted French support against Russia. Their opponents (the Nightcaps, or Caps) looked to England, and after 1748, to Russia, for support; their dependence on Russia and a failed coup in 1755, by King Adolf Friedrich and his Prussian wife to restore an absolutist monarchy, weakened their position.
122 Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi (1704–95) was the illegitimate half brother of the Princess of Hessen-Hamburg; their father was Prince Ivan Iurevich Trubetskoi (1667–1750). The Princess of Hessen-Hamburg’s first husband was Prince Dmitry Antiokhovich Kantemir (1663–1723); their daughter Princess Ekaterina Dmitrievna Golitsyna (1720–61) married (in 1751) Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1721–93). Hospodar was the title given to princes and governors of Moldavia and Walachia (today Romania).
123 He departed in early November 1757.
124 The treaty between Russia and England of September 19/30, 1755, was ratified on February 1, 1756. Russia then signed the Treaty of Versailles with France and Austria on December 20/31, 1756.
125 He arrived on December 23 and presented his papers as minister on December 31, 1756.
126 “Baba Ptitsa” means pelican; it is a bird (“ptitsa”) that looks like a “baba,” an old woman.
127 Elizabeth first established a council in March 1756 to prepare for war with Prussia.
128 January 29, 1757.
129 May 6, 1757.
130 A religious service held to mark a victory.
131 According to Poniatowski, the Prussian King Frederick the Great said: “I am his Dulcinea; he has never seen me, and like Don Quixote, he has fallen in love with me.” Mémoires du roi Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1914), 1:172.
132 August 6, 1758.
133 May 1764.
134 January 10, 1758.
135 Prussia and Saxony were the most powerful German states.
136 Maria Josepha was the oldest daughter of Emperor Joseph I.
137 May 30, 1758.
138 A sword knot is a looped strap, ribbon, etc., attached to the hilt of a sword as a support or ornament.
139 In a dispatch from July 27, 1757, L’Hôpital writes: “They say that the Grand Duchess is recently pregnant by Count Poniatowski” (quoted in Böhme 2:239).
140 September 8, 1757.
141 Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna (December 9, 1757, to March 8, 1759). Catherine has the year wrong.
142 The events Catherine assigns to this year in fact occurred in 1758. Catherine also wrote “1759,” the wrong year, in the margin.
143 Buturlin married on February 15, Strogonov on February 18, and Naryshkin on February 22, 1758.
144 February 14, 1758.
145 Poniatowski writes: “There was a Venetian jeweler who often took the Grand Chancellor’s and my letters to the Grand Duchess and brought the replies.” Mémoires 1:319.
146 A conventicle is a small, clandestine meeting, in a pejorative sense.
147 By the manifesto of February 27, 1758.
148 Manifesto of April 5, 1759.
149 April 7, 1758.
150 “Today my damned nephew irritated me as never before” and “My nephew is a monster, the devil take him.” The spelling irregularities may be Catherine’s transcription or Elizabeth’s original notes.
151 Chevalier, a knight of an order (not a cavalier, or gentleman).
152 From “I have just said” to “hand at will” left out of the Russian Academy edition (1907) of Catherine’s works.
153 March 7, 1758.
154 Fedor Iakovlevich Dubiansky was married to Maria Konstantinovna Sharogorodskaia, the daughter of Konstantin Fedorovich Sharogorodsky (d. 1735), who had also been Elizabeth’s confessor (Böhme 2:271).
155 April 13, 1758.
156 Princess Johanna was in Hamburg; she arrived in Paris in July 1758, a refugee (because of her ties with Russia) from Prussia’s Seven Years’ War with Russia.
157 Abbé Prévost (1697–1763), et al., ed. Histoire générale des voyages; ou, Nouvelle collection de toutes les relations de voyages par mer et par terre, qui ont été publiées jusqu’à présent dans les di férentes langues de toutes les nations connues . . . pour former un système complet d’histoire et de géographie moderne, qui representera l’état actuel de toutes les nations: enrichi de cartes géographiques . . . , 20 vols. (Paris: Chez Didot, 1746–92).
158 Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 58 vols. (1751–72).
159 Princess Sophie was baptized on April 23, 1729.
160 Prince Charles became Duke of Courland on November 16, 1758, and was invested on January 8, 1759.
161 Catherine dedicated part 2 of her middle memoir to him.
162 May 23, 1758.
163 June 17, 1757.
164 Catherine crossed out what she used in the memoir. Whatever she did not cross out is in italics.
165 Elizabeth has a stroke on September 8, 1757.
166; December 9, 1757. Her daughter, Anna Petrovna, died on March 8, 1759; she never mentions her daughter’s death anywhere.
167 February 18 and 22, 1758.
168 February 14, 1758.
169 April 13, 1758.
170 August 14, 1758 (n.s.).
171 May 30, 1758.
172; May 23, 1758.
173 June 25/July 6, 1758.
174 Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 139.
175 In his memoirs (1: 327–31), Poniatowski describes how the Grand Duke and his drunken party met him as he arrived at Oranienbaum to see Catherine. After snide comments by his mistress, the Grand Duke had him detained as he was leaving. The Grand Duke “first asked me in clear terms whether I had . . . his wife. I told him no.” The Grand Duke brought in Alexander Shuvalov as head of the Secret Chancery, to whom Poniatowski said, “I believe that you understand, Monsieur, that it is absolutely crucial for the honor of your own court that all of this end with as little fuss as possible and you get me out of here as soon as possible.” Shuvalov agreed, and gave Poniatowski a carriage to leave. Two days later he received a note from Catherine, indicating “that she had taken several steps to win over her husband’s mistress.” Catherine told him to meet her at Peterhof, where she would be with the court for St. Peter’s Day, June 29/July 11, 1758. That evening Catherine finds Poniatowski in the Grand Duke’s chamber. ‡ This passage appears in final memoirs before what should be the end of 1757 (before the birth of her daughter), but which Catherine mistakenly thinks is 1758. Here it comes after the middle of 1758, or what Catherine thinks is 1759.