Catherine II, the only empress in Russian history to be named "The Great", opened up the territory, advocated enlightened despotism, consolidated feudal serfdom, and in her middle age, she proudly said: If I can live to be 200 years old, then all of Europe will crawl under my feet!
In fact, during his 34 years in power, the great ruler made great efforts and actively expanded, pushing Russia to its peak and once becoming the most prosperous power on the map of Europe.
The wife of the Russian Crown Prince who came out of the house of the fallen nobility in Germany
In 1729, a baby girl was born in the house of a fallen duke with a fief in Germany, this baby girl was delicate and lovely, and her father, Duke Anharet, named her Sophia August, so everyone called her Princess Sophia.
Princess Sophia has been cheerful, brave and intelligent since childhood, she is rarely restrained, and her childhood is carefree. When she was a teenager, Sophia liked to read the books of the French Enlightenment thinker and jurist Montesquieu, and often maintained correspondence with Montesquieu, which shows that Sophia has been different from those delicate girls since childhood, and has a lot of heroism and courage.
In 1742, the 13-year-old Princess Sophia, accompanied by her mother, went to Berlin to meet the German monarch, who loved the bright girl so much that he asked the court painter to paint a portrait of Sophia, and then sent the painting to St. Petersburg, Russia.
The German monarch made such an arrangement in fact to make Princess Sophia the fiancée of the Russian Crown Prince, fortunately, Empress Elizabeth of Russia did choose the portrait of Sophia after a thousand choices, and the Russian royal family decided to make a marriage contract with Sophia August, the princess of the German Principality of Ankhalt.
Princess Sophia understood that this was a precious opportunity given by fate, and in order to make a perfect impression on Empress Elizabeth, Sophia traveled thousands of miles to St. Petersburg, Russia, first converted to Orthodox Church, changed her name to a more wonderful-sounding "Catherine Arikseevna", and later, specially found a Russian teacher, and studied Russian until she learned Russian fluently.
Kung Fu paid off, and for Catherine, who wanted to quickly integrate into the Russian court, nothing was more important than lifelong happiness. Therefore, on the day of the first official meeting with the Russian royal family, Catherine succeeded in impressing Empress Elizabeth with her good looks and fluent Russian, and was unanimously praised by the people in the court.
The newlywed crown prince's husband did not love him, and the young couple eventually turned against each other
In 1745, Catherine, with the beautiful vision of marriage of a young girl, married the Russian Crown Prince Peter III in the presence of members of the royal family, and after marriage, Catherine had the honorable status of Grand Duchess, which made thousands of Russian girls envious.
But Peter was not satisfied with the royal marriage, and he did not like Catherine, but instead had a crush on the queen's maid. The young couple smiled sweetly at the wedding ceremony, but after 5 years of not sharing a bed, Catherine gradually changed from full of expectations to full of sorrow and unspeakable words - she finally understood one thing: her husband Peter did not love her at all.
However, love can not be forced, for Catherine who is married far away, without the company of her husband and the ear and ear, she can still find a lot of things in the huge palace that can enrich herself, except for the occasional need to serve Empress Elizabeth carefully, most of the time is spent by Catherine to study.
At first Catherine found several novels to relieve her boredom, but later she came into contact with the works of the French philosopher Voltaire, and gradually fell into them and became interested in philosophical and political books. The history of philosophy was "nibbled" and Catherine turned out ten thick volumes of German history. The tireless Catherine was indeed very rewarding, and the amount of knowledge she accumulated in her mind enabled her to understand Montesquieu's esoteric legal works.
Compared with the positive Catherine, the indulgent Crown Prince Peter III was obviously very bad, and could be described as "unlearned and unruly".
As empress, Elizabeth II was obviously looking forward to Catherine giving birth to a new heir to the Empire as soon as possible, but the young couple had always been in a state of ignoring each other and had secret lovers, so that the Russian Empire still had no successor, which was undoubtedly Empress Elizabeth's biggest worry.
Soon, the Empress instructed the Head of The Guard to tell Catherine that she must give birth to an heir to the Empire as soon as possible, otherwise the position of the Grand Duchess would be in jeopardy. Catherine did not want to be forced back to the worst, so she soon became pregnant with her lover and gave birth to a boy the following year, elizabeth's grandson Paul.
The heir of the empire was born, but Catherine was even more disappointed, and people only cared about this precious grandson, not about Catherine's fertility. Four years later, Catherine became pregnant again and gave birth to another girl, but things went even worse – Peter despised Catherine even more, and he even publicly humiliated her: it is a question of who the child is, and it is not known how Catherine got pregnant.
Catherine endured the pain of being ignored and humiliated, and only wanted to feed her young daughter well, but no one expected that the baby girl would die before she was one year old.
Catherine touched the quilt left by her daughter, and her heart was full of anger and resentment. Unwilling to succumb to fate, she is bent on controlling the direction of fate, so she secretly seeks out her supporters so that she can one day win against Peter.
Relying on the support of many lovers and the success of the executioner to ascend to the throne
Catherine, who was married far away, did not have convincing money and power, but she cleverly used her 23 lovers before and after her to cheer herself up, win over power and even buy people's hearts.
In 1761, Peter III inherited the throne of Russia, but he had already killed Catherine, and soon after succeeding to the throne, Peter III also deliberately found someone to set a fire in the palace, hoping to kill Catherine in the raging fire, but Catherine's life should not be extinguished.
Peter III had already pointed his sword at himself, and the clever Catherine hastened the pace of the coup. Six months after Peter III's succession, the guards staged a coup d'état, first throwing Peter III into prison, and then Catherine decisively issued an order to assassinate Peter III. Soon, at the age of 33, Catherine ascended to the throne as a Tsarist empress.
The empress ruled the country well and was deeply loved by the people because of her outstanding merits
When Catherine first ascended to the throne, she casually inquired about the overall state of the country at that time, but learned that Russia's domestic politics and economy were very decaying, the treasury had been hollowed out by Peter III, and the overall situation was full of dangers.
As the head of a country, Catherine immediately used all kinds of political, economic, and philosophical knowledge she had learned in the book to start a huge journey of governing the country. Internally, the serfdom system was first consolidated and a highly centralized autocratic system was guaranteed, and then enlightened autocracy was implemented, the development of agriculture and commerce throughout the country was vigorously promoted, and education was run and educated, and talented people in various fields were encouraged to be cultivated and reused.
Externally, Empress Catherine did not hesitate to spend huge sums of money to conquer the territory, and during the 34 years of her rule in Russia, the land area expanded by nearly 790,000 square kilometers. Under the repeated actions of Empress Catherine, Russia became the most powerful country on the map of Europe at that time.
Catherine's series of wise political measures made the country strong and the people live a prosperous life, and this fiery and brave empress was deeply loved by the Russian people, and in order to show her merits, the Russian Privy Council also awarded her the honor of "Emperor".
Empress Catherine's life was soaked with struggle and tears, and the reason why she was able to rise to the top of power was actually to practice a common saying: women are not ruthless, they are bound to be unable to stand.