IN mighty Russia, that land of violent extremes, that land of lavish wealth and utter poverty,—whose frightful climate conquered the otherwise invincible Napoleon, and with its keen frosts snapped the pillars of his throne; where millions tremble before a despot whose will is fettered by no constitution; whose prisons are the ice realms of Siberia, whither so many trains of wretched captives have passed to linger hopelessly in living tombs; whose smouldering fires of discontent and hatred, fanned by the ardent breath of Nihilism, are constantly breaking out into rebellion and assassination,—in that land of splendor and of barbarism, behold St. Petersburg, the city of the Czars, founded by Peter the Great in 1703, and risen out of the desolate marshes of Ladoga to be the worthy capital of a great empire.

St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, with its royal and princely residences, adorned with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns surmounted by massive friezes, entablatures, and sculptures; with its Grecian and Gothic temples, its great squares, its splendid, spacious streets, its monuments, its warehouses and docks, its gardens and boulevards, Cronstadt with its frowning bastions and painted spires, and in the midst, giving to all an air of space, of freedom, and dignity, the Neva, thronged by craft of all kinds and sizes, from the tiny gondola to the man-of-war, and from the mighty merchant ship to the rude barge laden with timber or with grain,—presents a scene of opulence and magnificence which makes it difficult to realize that the foundations of this great metropolis were placed in the quaking bogs of Lake Ladoga.

Upon the bank of the Neva, midway between the Senate House and the Admiralty, stands that most famous of the monuments of St. Petersburg,—the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. A splendid statue, this, of bronze and of colossal size. Peter, astride a mighty charger, reins back his steed upon the brink of a precipice, and stretches forth his sceptre, while he seems to survey with proud triumph the wonderful growth of the city of which he is the “creator,” and of which he might exclaim, as did Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, “Is not this great Petersburg, that I have built by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty!”

Little did Peter think, when he laid aside the sceptre of his empire, that five women would reign after him in almost direct succession, and that the last, the greatest of them all, would rear to him this costly monument upon the borders of the Neva.

Peter I. was succeeded by his wife, Catherine, who governed for two years, then Peter II., a poor boy of fourteen, who had the privilege of ruling nominally for a few months, and then Anne, niece of Peter I. was placed upon the throne.

Anne reigned ten years, or rather her favorites reigned for her, and in 1740 she ended her insignificant life. Then baby Prince Ivan was proclaimed Emperor Ivan III. But his mother, Anne of Mecklenburg, thirsted for imperial power. So Biren, the regent, went to Siberia, and Anne of Mecklenberg ruled in his stead. It was only for a year, however, for in 1741 Elizabeth, cousin of Anne, headed the imperial guards who had revolted, and declared herself Empress Elizabeth the First.

Elizabeth ruled for twenty years, and commenced by declaring that “she would never put a subject to death upon any provocation whatever,”—a principle all very fine in theory, but never put in practice. And since it so affected her tender heart to take the lives of her dear subjects, she contented herself by sending them to Siberia, which answered her purpose quite as well.

“Joanna,” said she to her lady of the bedchamber, who one day reproached her for the miserable manner in which she educated her nephew, the grand-duke,—“Joanna, knowest thou the road to Siberia?” Joanna took the hint and henceforth held her peace.

On the 2d of May, 1729, at Stettin, in Prussia, was born Sophia Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst-Bernburg, who, in 1762, resigned all these sonorous and illustrious titles to be called simply—Catherine II.

In 1747 the Empress Elizabeth married her nephew, the worthless grand-duke, to this Princess of Anhalt, and at the death of the empress, in 1761, he became Peter III.

Things went smoothly enough for the first few months, but soon Sophia Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt, desired to reign alone and undisputed upon the throne of the Romanoffs, and in that highly moral and virtuous assembly, the imperial court of St. Petersburg, there were many who, in the hope of self-aggrandizement, would not scruple to terminate the mortal career of the Emperor Peter the Third.

There were three separate conspiracies against the life of Peter; and Catherine, who appeared to do nothing herself, was in reality the mover of all.

Peter was spending a few days at his country palace of Oranienbaum, from whence he was to proceed to the palace of Peterhof, where the conspirators intended to seize and carry him off.

But all these fine plans were overthrown by a soldier of the guard, who innocently asked his captain on what day they were to take up arms against the emperor. The terrified captain, who knew nothing of the conspiracy, gave notice to his superiors. Then all is terror in the ranks of the conspirators; and the Princess Dashkoff, when she learns of the discovery of the plot, hastily gives intelligence to her party. The Empress Catherine sleeps at Peterhof, where she has gone to meet her husband. At two o’clock in the morning a soldier stands at her bedside. It is Alexis Orloff. “Your Majesty,” he says, “has not a moment to lose; rise and follow me!”

The empress and her maid dress in haste. Orloff conducts them to the garden gate, where a carriage is in waiting. The empress and her maid are placed in it. Alexis seizes the reins, and they are off at a gallop.

Before they have gone far the carriage breaks, and Catherine is compelled to continue her journey on foot. When they have walked about a mile, they meet a peasant driving a country cart. Immediately Alexis Orloff seizes the horses, places the empress in the cart, and drives at full speed toward the capital.

The Emperor Peter III. sleeps quietly in his palace at Oranienbaum, while his wife, Catherine II., drives madly along the road from Peterhof to Petersburg, to place upon her head the imperial diadem of Russia.

At seven in the morning Catherine reached St. Petersburg. She immediately presented herself to the soldiers, assuring them that the Czar, her husband, intended to put her to death that very night, and that they were her only protection. This lie was believed at the moment, and the men swore to die in her defence.

The Orloffs raised a cry of “Long live the Empress Catherine!” and the soldiers echoed the shout. Their officers encouraged them, and when Villebois, general of artillery, ventured to remonstrate, Catherine turned upon him haughtily, told him she wanted no advice of his, but to know what he intended to do. The general, confounded at her assumed air of command, could only stammer, “To obey your Majesty!” and immediately delivered the arsenals and magazines of the city into her hands.

Thus in two hours did Catherine find herself upon the throne, with an army at her command, and the capital at her feet.

Meanwhile Peter III., totally unconscious of the usurpation of his unfaithful spouse, ordered his carriage, and set out for Peterhof, where he was informed of the revolt. This news threw him into such horror and confusion, that for a time he lost the use of his faculties. He could resolve on nothing, and his imbecility was like that of a terrified child.

Finally, however, he sat down and wrote a submissive letter to Catherine, acknowledging his errors, and proposing to share the sovereign authority with her. To this letter Catherine gave no reply, except to send Count Panin to the Czar, who persuaded him to sign a declaration that he was not fit to reign, and that he voluntarily abdicated the throne. Having done this, the poor, weak prince was carried off and locked up in the palace of Ropscha. “It was necessary that some apparent reason should be given for such extraordinary proceedings, and a short manifesto was accordingly set forth, proclaiming the accession of Catherine, without any mention of the unhappy emperor, but alleging as her only motives for assuming the government her tender regard for the welfare of the people, and above all for the holy and orthodox Greek religion, which she feared was exposed to total ruin; and this notable document of state villany thus concludes: ‘For these causes, etc., we, putting our trust in Almighty God and in his divine justice, have ascended the imperial throne of all the Russias, and have received a solemn oath of fidelity from all our faithful subjects.’ Dated June 28, 1762.

“Thus, by a revolution which never could have occurred under any other government than that of Russia, which few could account for and no one seemed to comprehend,—which was accomplished in the course of a single day, without injury to individuals, and without tumultuous violence,—did a young woman, a foreigner, and a stranger to the imperial blood, spring into the throne of the Czars.”

Catherine II., having thus established herself upon the throne, began to consider how she could best retain her newly acquired power. The first obstacle which presented itself to her mind was the Czar, Peter III. She had him under lock and key at Ropscha, it is true, but then he had his friends and his faithful Holstein guards, who had seen his downfall with grief and indignation. So Peter III. must be made an end of, and those most accomplished of villains, Orloff and Baratinsky, were sent to Ropscha to make an end of him, which deed they performed very satisfactorily both to themselves and to the empress, by strangling him in his dining apartment with a napkin.

The news of his death was announced to the empress as she was on the point of holding her court, but, as the proper precautions had not been taken, she did not choose to make it public, and went on with her audience with every appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity. On the following day, while dining in public, the death of the Czar was formally announced; and immediately she rose from the table, all bathed in tears, and retired to her apartment, where for several days she feigned the greatest grief. She afterward published a manifesto, in which she announced to her subjects “that it had pleased Almighty God to remove the late Emperor Peter the Third from this world, by a violent attack of a malady to which he had heretofore been subject, and desiring them to consider it as an especial act of Providence working in her favor.” None were stupid enough to believe this monstrous lie, and none were bold enough to contradict it, and this was answer sufficient for the Empress Catherine II.

But “what a sight for the nation itself, a calm spectator of these events! On one side, the grandson of Peter I. dethroned and put to death; on the other, the grandson of the Czar Ivan languishing in fetters; while a Princess of Anhalt usurps the throne of their ancestors, clearing her way to it by a regicide.”

As a sovereign, Catherine displayed marked ability. She effected several useful reforms, established important institutions, encouraged national intercourse, founded schools and hospitals, and erected arsenals and manufactories.

During her lifetime she published a list of two hundred and forty-five cities which she had founded in her dominions. This sounds very grand; but we may look as vainly for her cities as for those of Babylonian Semiramis. In some instances she merely indicated the spot where she intended a city should be erected; in others, she gave the name of a city to some hamlet or village.

When she made her famous voyage down the Dnieper, in 1787, Joseph II. accompanied her to lay the foundations of a city to be called, after her name, Ekaterinaslof, and which, in her imagination, already rivalled St. Petersburg. The empress laid the first stone with great pomp, and the emperor laid the second. On returning from the ceremony, Joseph remarked, in his dry, epigrammatic manner: “The empress and I have this day achieved a great work; she has laid the first stone of a great city, and I have laid the last.” His speech was prophetic. The city never proceeded farther, nor was it thought of again.

Catherine had one overmastering passion,—ambition; and since the basis of her character was selfishness, her ambition began and ended with herself. She was shrewd in principle, astute in judgment, hard in character, and hopelessly corrupt in morals. But “she knew how to make herself looked up to, if not with respect and liking, at least with deference; and Frederick the Great, Louis XV., Maria Theresa, and George III., each in their turn, learned to regard her acts with attention.”

The principal fame of Catherine rests on her celebrated code of laws, and on her title of legislatrix of her dominions.

“If,” said Frederick of Prussia, “several women as sovereigns have obtained a deserved celebrity,—Semiramis for her conquests, Elizabeth of England for her political sagacity, Maria Theresa for her astonishing firmness of character,—to Catherine alone may be given the title of a female law-giver.”

But how much of this was fulsome flattery and how much honest praise, it is not very difficult to discern, considering the gross nature of Catherine, and the cunning diplomacy of Frederick.

Catherine is said to have doubled the resources and revenues of her empire. Undoubtedly she increased the resources by the extension of her commerce; and by her conquests over the Turks, which threw open the trade and navigation of the Mediterranean, she added greatly to the power of Russia; but she exhausted her resources much faster than she could create them, and she wasted her revenues more quickly than she could replenish them. She doubled and trebled the taxes of her oppressed people, and the legal pillage of her tyrannical officers drove whole provinces to desperation.

“Kings and queens,” she wrote in her letter to Queen Marie Antoinette, “ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the people, as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of the dogs.” A fine sentiment truly, and one which she took good care should not grow dull for want of use during her lifetime.

To find some parallel for the criminal profusion of Catherine, a profusion which exceeds all calculation, we must go back to the days of Caligula and Heliogabalus.

Her favorites were countless: her lavishness towards them almost incredible. Upon them she squandered a sum equal to $100,000,000.

She bestowed estates equal in extent to provinces; and by a word, by a stroke of her pen, she, who called her people her children, and, by her royal clemency, had substituted the word subject for slave, gave away thousands, tens of thousands, of serfs, poor wretches transferred like cattle from one proprietor to another. “She gave diamonds by handfuls, and made gold and silver as common as pebbles. Yet when we read over the names and qualifications of those who were her confidants and ministers, or of those who were particularly distinguished by her munificence, it is like looking over the peerage of Pandemonium”; for where but in the court of Russia, with a female Louis XV. in the person of Catherine II. upon the imperial throne, could such an assemblage of fiends and savages, ruffians and reptiles, demons and cormorants, have been congregated together to fatten on the blood and tears of an oppressed people?

In pursuance of the mighty plans which she had formed, Catherine kept two objects steadily in view: first, to extend her dominions on the west by seizing Poland; and secondly, to drive the Turks from Constantinople.

She began with Poland, marched an army into that country, forced upon the Poles a king of her own choice, dictated laws at the point of the bayonet, intimidated the weak by threats, and massacred and exiled all who resisted.

The Poles could not endure this usurpation of their country. They rose against the Russians, and from 1765, when Catherine first invaded the country, till its final seizure in 1795, Poland presented a scene of horror, calamity, and crime.

The Poles besought the aid of the Turks, and thus began the first Turkish war declared in 1768. Fierce and bloody was this war, and in 1774 the Turks were compelled to sue for peace, acceding to the humiliating conditions which Catherine haughtily demanded, that the Ottoman Porte should recognize the independence of the Crimea, and yield to Russia the free navigation of the Black Sea and the Archipelago.

In 1774 also, the empress-queen disgraced Gregory Orloff and raised to the post of favorite and chief minister, Potemkin, afterward Prince Potemkin, of infamous renown, who for more than twenty years held the highest honors of the empire. He was neither a great statesman nor a great general, but he was certainly an extraordinary man. He had all the petulance, audacity, and wilfulness of a spoiled boy, yet he possessed a genius fit to conceive and execute great designs. “His character displayed a singular union of barbarism and grandeur, and of the most inconsistent and apparently incompatible qualities. He was at once the most indolent and the most active man in the world; the most luxurious, and the most indefatigable; no dangers appalled and no difficulties repulsed him; yet the slightest caprice, a mere fit of temper, would cause him to abandon projects of vital importance. At one time he talked of making himself king of Poland; at another of turning monk or bishop. He began everything, completed nothing, disordered the finances, disorganized the army, depopulated the country. He lived with the magnificence of a sovereign prince. At one moment he would make an aide-de-camp ride two or three hundred miles to bring him a melon or a pineapple; at another he would be found devouring a raw carrot or cucumber in his own antechamber.

“He scarcely ever opened a book, yet he learned everything, and forgot nothing; his wonderful quickness in appropriating the knowledge of others served him instead of study. Altogether his great qualities and his defects precisely fitted him to obtain the ascendency over such a mind as that of Catherine; she grew tired of others, but his caprices, his magnificence, and his gigantic plans, continually interested and occupied her.” Under his administration all things did not go on well, we may be sure but all went on, and the empress was content.

The second Turkish war having ended in 1783 with the annexation of the Crimea and Kuban, under the classic names of Taurida and the Caucasus, Potemkin persuaded Catherine to go and admire herself in her new dominions, a thing which she was only too ready to do.

So on the 18th of January, 1787, the imperial cortÈge set out from St. Petersburg. There were fourteen carriages upon sledges for the empress and her court, and one hundred and sixty for the attendants and baggage. Five hundred and sixty relays of horses waited them at every post, and the luxurious carriages flew over the frozen plains at the rate of a hundred miles a day. Wherever they stopped, a temporary palace was erected for the empress, fitted with every luxury, and arranged, as much as possible, like her palace at St. Petersburg. When they arrived at Khief, the empress embarked on the Dnieper, and with a fleet of fifty galleys sailed down the river to Cherson.

Here money, provisions, and troops had been conveyed from every part of the empire. The Borysthenes was covered with magnificent galleys; a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers were newly equipped; deserts were peopled for the occasion, and palaces reared for the empress queen in the midst of trackless wilds.

The king of Poland came to do her homage, and the Emperor Joseph was content to mingle among the herd of her courtiers and swell the splendor of her state.

Catherine herself scattered diamonds and honors with her usual liberality. “In her travelling-carriage she had a large, green sack, full of gold coins, and her courtiers were kept busy throwing handfuls out of the window to the people, who lay grovelling on the earth as her carriage passed by.”

After six months spent in this sort of travelling, the empress returned to St. Petersburg.

As a refuge from the cares of state, Louis XIV. had built his Trianon, and Frederick the Great his Sans-Souci, and Catherine II., oppressed like them, reared the splendid palace of the Hermitage, within whose portals she laid aside the imperial diadem of all the Russias, and became a patron of literature and the fine arts.

Beneath a great portal, supported by colossal granite giants, is the entrance to this Hermitage, over whose steps have often passed those discarded favorites of the empress-queen, smothering under forced smiles and honeyed words their inward rage and indignation; for when Catherine wearied of her favorites she sent them an order to travel.

“I am tired of him,” she would say; “his ignorance makes me blush. He can speak nothing but Russian. He must travel in France and England to learn other languages.” The courtier who received this intelligence was not long in preparing his travelling-carriage.

At the Hermitage, Catherine surrounded herself with men of letters. Here were Lomonozof, the poet; Sumorokof, the dramatic author; Kheraskof, the writer of tragedies; Sherebetoff, the historian; and Pallas, the naturalist.

She especially affected the friendship of French writers. She entertained Diderot with royal magnificence, and purchased his library; she gave the education of her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, to the care of the republican Laharpe; and she kept up a constant correspondence with Voltaire. Catherine, herself, had no real love for the arts; but she patronized them all as subservient to her glory and her power.

“Thus she not only had no taste for music, but she was destitute of ear to distinguish one tune from another, as she often frankly acknowledged; but nothing less would serve her than an Italian corps d’opera attached to her domestic establishment. She had no taste for painting, yet she purchased at a high price some beautiful collections, and in the gallery of her palace of the Hermitage hung some magnificent specimens of the Italian and Flemish schools, purchased in France and Italy.”

Fifteen miles from the capital of Russia is the beautiful palace of Czars-Koe-Selo, the Versailles of St. Petersburg. Catherine II. was very fond of this place, and spent enormous sums on its embellishment. Originally every ornament and statue upon the faÇade of the palace, which is no less than twelve hundred feet in length, was heavily plated with gold. After a few years the gilding wore off, and the contractors engaged to repair it offered the empress nearly half a million of dollars for the fragments which remained. But the extravagant Catherine answered them scornfully:—

“I am not in the habit, gentlemen,” she said, “of selling my old clothes.”

The main avenue leading to this palace of Czars-Koe-Selo is ornamented with several Chinese statues. One morning as the empress was taking her usual promenade along the avenue, she thought she detected a faint smile upon the face of one of the heathen images. She observed it more closely. Surely it was no fancy! the eyes returned her gaze, and that, too, with an expression remarkably human.

Catherine II. was not a woman to be afraid of anything. Accordingly, she walked straight towards the statue, determined to solve the mystery. She was startled for a moment, however, when all the figures leaped from their pedestals, and, hats in hand, begged her to pardon the little surprise with which they tried to enliven her morning walk; for her favorite Potemkin and three other courtiers had, in jest, exactly copied the dress and attitude of the Chinese figures.

When Prince Bismarck was Prussian ambassador at the court of Alexander II., he was one day standing with the Czar at a window of the Peterhof Palace, when he observed a sentinel in the centre of the lawn with apparently nothing whatever to guard. Out of curiosity he inquired of the Czar why the man was stationed there. Alexander turned to an aide-de-camp.

“Count ——,” said he, “why is that soldier stationed there?”

“I do not know, your Imperial Majesty.”

The Czar frowned. “Send me the officer in command,” he said.

The officer appeared. “Prince —— why is a sentinel stationed on that lawn?”

“I do not know, your Majesty.”

“Not know?” cried the Czar in surprise; “request then the general commanding the troops at Peterhof to present himself immediately.”

The general appeared. “General,” said the Czar, “why is that soldier stationed in yonder isolated place?”

“I beg leave to inform your Majesty that it is in accordance with an ancient custom,” replied the general evasively.

“What was the origin of the custom?” inquired Bismarck.

“I—I do not at present recollect,” stammered the officer.

“Investigate, and report the result,” said Alexander.

So the investigation began, and after three days and nights of incessant labor, it was ascertained that some eighty years before, Catherine II., looking out one spring morning from the windows of this palace of Peterhof, observed in the centre of this lawn, the first May-flower of the season, lifting its delicate head above the lately frozen soil.

She ordered a soldier to stand there to prevent its being plucked. The order was inscribed upon the books; and thus for eighty years, in summer and in winter, in sunshine and in storm, a sentinel had stood upon that spot, no one apparently, until the time of Bismarck, caring to question the reason of his so doing! Such was, and is, the absolutism of the government of the Czars!

Catherine had long resolved that one of her granddaughters should be queen of Sweden.

Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, was already affianced to a princess of Mecklenburg; but with Catherine to will was to do, so she contrived to have this marriage broken off, and brought the young king to St. Petersburg, where she thought her own consummate address and the charms of the intended bride would accomplish the rest.

For once, however, Catherine, the crafty, deceived herself.

Proposals of marriage were speedily made, the treaty drawn up, the day of betrothment fixed, and a splendid fÊte prepared.

The appointed time arrived. The empress, surrounded by her court, sat in the audience chamber of the Winter Palace.

Alexandrina, adorned in bridal pomp, stood at the side of her imperial grandmother; all was in readiness, but the royal bridegroom came not. They waited—there was a depressing silence—the bride turned pale, the empress turned red, the courtiers looked at one another ominously.

A very different scene, however, was being enacted in the apartments of the king of Sweden.

The Chancellor Markoff had brought the articles of marriage to him for his signature. As a mere matter of form, he read them over rapidly; but the young king, who listened, became aware that certain articles were inserted which had not been previously agreed upon.

It was a law of Sweden that the queen of the country must profess the faith of the nation, and exchange the Greek for the Lutheran church; but the haughty and imperious Catherine had decided that her imperial granddaughter should be made an exception to this law, and had introduced into the marriage treaty a clause to that effect.

The king refused to sign the contract.

The chancellor was thunderstruck. A mere boy to resist the will of the empress; it was preposterous!

He flattered, he entreated, he implored; but all in vain.

Gustavus was immovable; and enraged at the attempt to deceive him, he flung the papers away.

“No,” he cried furiously, “I will not have it! I will not sign!” and he shut himself up in his own apartment.

Here was an unexpected contretemps. Who would dare to relate this pleasing news to the empress-queen, surrounded by her expectant court?

For some time no one could be prevailed upon to do it, but finally her favorite, Zuboff, approached Catherine and whispered to her. The blood rushed to her face and, attempting to rise, she staggered. But she controlled herself with a mighty effort, and dismissing her court under the pretence that the king of Sweden was suddenly indisposed, retired to her cabinet.

The poor Princess Alexandrina was conducted to her apartment, where she fainted away. In her tender heart, a sad and crushing sorrow mingled with mortification and wounded pride; but Catherine the imperial, Catherine the imperious,—what were her sensations?

“Braved on her throne, insulted in her court, overreached in her policy, she could only sustain herself by the hope of vengeance. Pride and state etiquette forbade any expression of temper, but the effect on her frame was perhaps more than fatal. The king of Sweden took his departure a few days afterward, and Catherine, who from that instant meditated his destruction, was preparing all the resources of her great empire for war,—war on every side,—when the death stroke came, and she fell, like a sorceress, suffocated among her own poisons.”

Upon the 9th of November, 1796, she was found by her attendants stretched upon the floor of her apartment, struck by apoplexy. All attempts to reanimate her were in vain; and on the following day, without having had one moment granted her to think, to prepare, or to repent, this terrible and depraved old woman was hurried out of the world, with all her sins upon her head.

Such was the end of her whom the Prince de Ligne had pompously styled “Catherine la Grande.”

Though her political crimes and private sins were such as to consign her to universal execration, she seems to have possessed all the graces of an accomplished Frenchwoman.

In her personal deportment, and in the circle of her court, she was kind, easy, and good-humored. Her serenity of temper and composure of manner were remarkable; and the contrast between the simplicity of her deportment in private and the grandeur of her situation rendered her exceedingly fascinating.

She possessed so many accomplishments, was so elegant and dignified, and performed with such majesty and decorum all the external functions of royalty, that none approached her without respect and admiration; but her selfishness and her depravity spoiled all, and made her what we have seen her.

Among all the famous queens of history, there is not one, save Catherine de’ Medici, whose career is so utterly devoid of noble acts, so entirely dictated by “selfishness, lust, and sordid greed,” as that of Catherine II., removed by the grace of God on the 10th of November, 1796, from being longer empress of all the Russias, and from the world which she had done so much to pollute.