Throughout the history of the development of Tsarist Russia, only two tsars are called the Emperor, one is Peter the Great, and the other is the protagonist that Chuchu wants to talk about today, Catherine the Great, she is also the only empress in Russian history who is called the title of The Great, from the princess of the small principality to the snubbed Russian Grand Duchess, and finally became the Emperor who has been passed down for hundreds of generations, her life can be described as wonderful, how did she embark on the peak of power?
Catherine
Next, let Chu Chu take everyone to know about Catherine, who can be called the Northern Wu Zetian. New friends don't forget to click a wave of attention, nonsense is not much to say, start talking.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="2" > princess of a small country married to Russia</h1>
Although Catherine was the Empress of Russia, she was not Russian, but Prussian, and her original name was not Catherine, but Sophia August.
Sophia was born in 1729 in a humble little duchy in Prussia, his father was a general who fought for Prussia, and because of his outstanding military achievements, he was made a duke, but he belonged to the lower class among many nobles.
Although the power is not large, but no matter how to say that she is also from an aristocratic background, Sophia has eaten and dressed since she was a child, and her life is more carefree. Her father was out on the battlefield all year round and did not care much about the family, and her mother was mean by nature and lived in Paris all year round, so little Sophia did not listen to her parents' discipline from a young age, and was very naughty.
As a teenager, Catherine
Although she is a princess of the kingdom, whenever her parents are not there, Sophia will always sneak out to play with children of the same age on the street, but over time, Sophia's interest in playing has gradually decreased.
She was then influenced by the French Enlightenment thinkers, fell in love with reading, and wrote a letter to the thinker Montesquieu on her own initiative, and to her ecstatic, Montesquieu wrote back to her, and after that, the two often wrote letters to each other.
Gradually, little Sophia grew up, she gradually became calm, and she handled the twists and turns between the noble royal family very well, after all, she had been clever since she was a child, and it was difficult to learn anything. After seeing the game between the nobles, she also understood that before she was strong enough, she must abide by the rules of the game, so love or something, or do not hold out hope.
Montesquieu
At the same time, Prussia's ambitions were growing, and aristocratic marriage was the simplest and most direct form of alliance. After some twists and turns, Sophia was accused of marrying her distant cousin Karl Peter Ulrich, later Peter III, and from this time on, her fate was intertwined with Russia.
Peter was now established as Crown Prince of the Russian Empire, and interestingly, he was not Russian, but German, and his grandfather was the famous Peter the Great. The reason why it was his turn to be crown prince of the Russian Empire was because the male heirs of Russia had all died during the time of Peter II, visited the ancestors, and his sister-in-law, the Russian Empress Elizabeth, had no heirs, so Peter picked up a leak and became the future successor of the Russian Empire.
And King Frederick II of Prussia was very ambitious, he hoped to find a nobleman who was loyal to him, marry Russia, and later facilitate the control of the power of the Russian royal family, thousands of choices, he met Sophia, invited the best painter, painted a portrait of Sophia, sent it to St. Petersburg, and asked Empress Elizabeth to look at it.
Elizabeth I
The Russians also attached great importance to this, and coincidentally, they also wanted to find a role that seemed to be easy to control, and the royal family headed by Elizabeth spent a year studying various marriage plans, and finally chose Sophia.
When she learned that she was going to marry far away to Russia, Sophia's mood was very stable, she had long expected such a day, she did not resist, nor did she escape, but began to understand Russia, and worked hard to learn how to become a good daughter-in-law.
In 1744, Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter inviting Sophia to Russia, and after coming to Russia, Sophia and her mother met Elizabeth and her future husband, Crown Prince Peter.
Peter was not satisfied with Sophia, and to be honest, he preferred beautiful and beautiful princesses, but Sophia was plain-looking and petite, far from the queen of his own heart, but out of courtesy, Peter still treated her with courtesy.
Peter III
The meeting put so much pressure on Sophia, and she began to rack her brains to figure out how to gain a foothold in Russia.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="51" > struggled upwards</h1>
At first, she asked Empress Elizabeth to find her the best teacher, to learn Russian and Orthodox etiquette, to socialize during the day, and to study at night until late at night.
Due to the intensity of daily study, coupled with the lack of water and soil, Sophia soon fell ill, and was in a state of high fever for more than ten consecutive days, which made the people around her think that she was going to die, and even began to worry about the aftermath, her mother also invited the Lutheran priest to pray for her, but Sophia insisted on inviting the Orthodox priest teacher to come, which greatly changed the impression of the Russian royal family on the princess of the small country, and a month later, Sophia survived from the line of life and death, and her marriage to Peter III was also fixed.
Sophia knew that this was not enough, and she abandoned her old faith, converted to Orthodoxy, and changed her name to Catherine, because it was the name of Queen Elizabeth's mother, and she hoped to win Elizabeth's favor by changing her name. At the baptismal ceremony, the princess from a small country, with a new name and fluent Russian, once again won the favor of the court.
In 1745, Catherine and Archduke Peter had a grand wedding, and she was recognized by the Russian royal family as Grand Duchess, but what awaited her was an even more severe test.
Catherine, who became Grand Duchess, was not happy because Peter did not love him at all, and on her wedding night she accompanied Peter all night as a puppet soldier. In the days that followed, Peter often went outside for fun, summoning male servants to play military games with him in Catherine's boudoir, and raising various mistresses outside, and for five years after marriage, Peter refused to sleep with Catherine.
In order to avoid her husband, she often shut herself in her room, and reading became her only pastime, at first she only read some novels, and later, she read everything about history, philosophy, and culture, and even Montesquieu's most profound "On the Spirit of the Law" was studied by her.
On the other hand, due to the delay in childbearing, Elizabeth was very dissatisfied with Catherine, and she began to force the couple to have sex, and finally in 1754, Catherine gave birth to a baby boy, named Paul.
However, the baby boy was taken away by Elizabeth just after she was born, and the court was circling around Paul, and Catherine lay alone on the delivery bed for more than three hours without anyone to take care of her, and when she woke up, she had to walk back to her bedchamber alone.
Paul I Petrovich
After that, Catherine fell seriously ill, and for a whole year she was in a very bad state of health, and almost did not participate in any court activities. Perhaps during this period, Catherine no longer cared about her identity and began to pursue her love, while also planning how to survive in a foreign country.
Regarding her marriage, Catherine believes that this is a tragedy, and her husband Peter is simply a small child, fighting for his power and power. At first, there was nothing but affection between the two, but Peter beat and scolded Catherine, and constantly looked for a mistress outside to humiliate her, and over time, her feelings for Peter changed from dislike to hatred.
Portraits of Catherine and Peter III
Perhaps it is this marriage that gives her a desire for love, or perhaps it is to dominate her own destiny step by step. Catherine began to learn to meet her husband and lover, and in the days that followed, Catherine developed a boy scout group.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="53" > borrowed from heaven for another two hundred years</h1>
Catherine's first son, Paul, was initially suspected not to be Peter's heir, but to a beautiful man named Sergei Saltykov, who left Ekaterina shortly after Paul's birth.
Later, at a ball, Catherine met a second lover, the future king of Poland, gentle and eloquent, whose presence soothed Catherine's scarred heart. Once, he sneaked into Catherine's bedchamber and was caught by Peter's bodyguards, Peter angrily looked for Catherine's theory, Catherine did not instigate at all, but also called Peter's lover, four eyes facing each other, the scene was quite dramatic, and finally Peter laughed, and the matter was over.
In 1758, Catherine became pregnant again and gave birth to a baby girl named Anna.
At that time, there were many rumors in the court that the father of the child was definitely not Peter, and Peter was very angry when he learned of this, and his attitude towards Catherine was even more cold.
Catherine confessed in her diary that she had thought about it repeatedly and saw only three ways out:
The first is to continue to be Peter's wife and share the joys and sorrows with him.
The second was to go against the grain and be deposed and sent to the monastery.
The third is to take the initiative to take action and decide their own destiny.
In the end, she chose the third way, but at that time, Empress Elizabeth was still alive and well, and she did not know what kind of action she should take, so she could only actively prepare.
She then sought solace with several lovers, including Grigory Orlov, the leader of the King's Guard who later helped her usurp the throne, and her most famous lover and courtier, The Distinguished Russian Military Leader Grigory Potemkin.
Gregory Potemkin
On December 25, 1761, Empress Elizabeth died and Peter succeeded to the throne as Peter III.
Catherine realized that the opportunity had come, but at this time she did not have the energy to plan the coup d'état, because she was pregnant again, and the father of the child was still not Peter, but the leader of the Guards, Orlov. In April 1762, the child was born, and a few months after the birth of the child, Peter III, who was on the go, learned of this news, and after becoming emperor, his temper was even greater, and he immediately ordered catherine to be arrested.
But at the state banquet that later celebrated the signing of the Russian-Prussian treaty, Peter III, in front of many foreign guests, uttered foul language and humiliated Catherine fiercely. Alas, or peter III will not be emperor, how can this kind of childlike faction lead Russia to the world?
From this incident onwards, Catherine began to actively promote the coup d'état, and Peter III also planned to depose the empress, who had repeatedly embarrassed him. In June 1762, a Guard officer involved in planning a coup was arrested and the plan for a coup was exposed.
Catherine had to launch a coup d'état in advance, which would have been a great rebellion, but the great court could not find a strong supporter of Peter III, so Peter sat on the emperor's seat for less than a year, and was dragged down, and what was worse, eight days after the coup, Peter III was killed by the soldiers of the Guards.
On June 28, 1762, the 33-year-old Catherine gathered his supporting army and declared herself Tsar Catherine II of Russia, and on September 22, Catherine was officially crowned in Moscow.
After being crowned emperor, Catherine's lover Potemkin became the second most important person in Russia at that time, and when she was governing the country, she liked to consult potemkin on all matters and small things, and in the letters she retained, Catherine also called it: "My dearest husband." ”
Politically, Catherine was also different from the mentally unsound Peter III, who was well-informed and well-governed, leading the Russian nation in a southern conquest of the European continent and annexing one region after another, and Catherine II was also known for her military tough style throughout Europe. Her political style had a great influence on future generations of Russian rulers, and the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, called him his most admired person.
Despite Catherine's petite stature, this did not prevent her from dominating the whole of Europe, and her court painter once said: "She holds her head high, her eyes are as sharp as a falcon, and her murderous face is full of royal temperament, like the queen of the whole world." ”
In her later years, Catherine once lamented: "If I can live to be 200 years old, the whole of Europe will crawl under my feet." But her dream of borrowing from heaven for 200 years was obviously not heard by heaven.
On November 6, 1796, she died of a serious illness, and posterity remembered her exploits and honored her as Catherine the Great.
To be sure, catherine is not the only empress in Russian history, but she is the only one who can lead Russia to the top of Europe, she once wrote in her memoirs: "I often tell myself that happiness or sorrow depends on the heart." If you encounter misfortune, then summon up the courage to transcend. Even if the eyes are bleak, people can be happy and brave. ”
From the snubbed lady of the court to the tsarist Emperor of Russia, Catherine completed a magnificent turn with her own efforts.
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