How did Catherine the Great really die? | Sky HISTORY TV Channel Biography 27 (2004), 51734. In the west the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherine's former lover King Stanisaw August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share. [135], Later, several rumours circulated regarding the cause and manner of her death. [79], Within a few months of her accession in 1762, having heard the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French Encyclopdie on account of its irreligious spirit, Catherine proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection. Yet shed done an enormous amount of amazing things, had been a kid whod come to a country that wasnt her own and taken it over.. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission almost a consultative parliament composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. But across Europe, Catherine was generally blamed nonetheless. On 28 June 1791, Catherine granted Daikokuya an audience at Tsarskoye Selo. In these cases, it was necessary to replace this "fake" empress with the "true" empress, whoever she may be. The serfs probably followed someone who was pretending to be the true empress because of their feelings of disconnection to Catherine and her policies empowering the nobles, but this was not the first time they followed a pretender under Catherine's reign. Whilst this one is also just an absurd rumour, it lies ever so slightly nearer the truth. Catherine perceived that the Qianlong Emperor was an unpleasant and arrogant neighbour, once saying: "I shall not die until I have ejected the Turks from Europe, suppressed the pride of China and established trade with India". [117] In later years, Catherine amended her thoughts. After this, Catherine carried on sexual liaisons over the years with many men, including Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (17341783), Alexander Vasilchikov, Grigory Potemkin, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. By cleverly surrounding herself with those allied to her cause she strengthened her hold on the throne. Catherine decided to have herself inoculated against smallpox by Thomas Dimsdale, a British doctor. [69] With all this discontent in mind, Catherine did rule for 10 years before the anger of the serfs boiled over into a rebellion as extensive as Pugachev's. The period of Catherine the Great's rule is also known as the Catherinian Era. The church's lands were expropriated, and the budget of both monasteries and bishoprics were controlled by the Collegium of Accounting. [70] By 1790, the Hermitage was home to 38,000 books, 10,000 gems and 10,000 drawings. Russia and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War (17561763), and Russian troops had occupied Berlin in 1761. Like Empress Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. Her hunger for fame centred on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick. They introduced numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing. [32], Peter the Great had succeeded in gaining a toehold in the south, on the edge of the Black Sea, in the Azov campaigns. Catherines failure to abolish feudalism is often cited as justification for characterizing her as a hypocritical, albeit enlightened, despot. [114] Endowments from the government replaced income from privately held lands. In 1780, Emperor Joseph II, the son of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, toyed with the idea of determining whether or not to enter an alliance with Russia, and asked to meet Catherine. Heres what you need to know to separate fact from fiction ahead of the series May 15 premiere. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure. Following the war and the defeat of Pugachev, Catherine laid the obligation to establish schools at the guberniya a provincial subdivision of the Russian empire ruled by a governor on the Boards of Social Welfare set up with the participation of elected representatives from the three free estates.[97]. [73], She made a special effort to bring leading intellectuals and scientists to Russia, and she wrote her own comedies, works of fiction, and memoirs. The Treaty of Kk Kaynarca, signed 10 July 1774, gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn, and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. According to her memoirs, Sophie was regarded as a tomboy, and trained herself to master a sword. Cause of Death: Stroke. [62] This happened more often during Catherine's reign because of the new schools she established. Her genius seemed to rest on her forehead, which was both high and wide. Catherine never even mentioned her daughter's death in her memoirs. The answer is misogyny. Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the partitions of Poland. 1772-04-06 Catherine the Great Empress of Russia, ends tax on men with beards, enacted by Tsar . "Catherine II and the Socio-Economic Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia", This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 14:56. Several years into her reign, Catherine embarked on an ambitious legal endeavor inspired byand partially plagiarized fromthe writings of leading thinkers. [117] While claiming religious tolerance, she intended to recall the Old Believers into the official church. She recruited the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin and Anders Johan Lexell from Sweden to the Russian capital. The most widely known story of Catherine the Great involves her death at age 67 in 1796. This reversal aroused the frustration and enmity of the powerful Zubovs and other officers who took part in the campaign: many of them would be among the conspirators who arranged Paul's murder five years later.[39]. This was one of the chief reasons behind rebellions, including Pugachev's Rebellion of Cossacks, nomads, peoples of the Volga, and peasants. [68] Pugachev had made stories about himself acting as a real emperor should, helping the common people, listening to their problems, praying for them, and generally acting saintly, and this helped rally the peasants and serfs, with their very conservative values, to his cause. In 1777, the empress described to Voltaire her legal innovations within a backward Russia as progressing "little by little". Legends abound about Catherine the Greatthe good kind and the bad kind. Catherine had been targeted for being unmarried.[137]. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F.G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. Catherine II (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 - 17 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. Peter . These were the privileges a serf was entitled to and that nobles were bound to carry out. The official cause of death was advertised as hemorrhoidal colican absurd diagnosis that soon became a popular euphemism for assassination, according to Montefiore. And though Catherine is characterized by modern viewers as very flighty and superficial, Hartley notes that she was a genuine bluestocking, waking up at 5 or 6 a.m. each morning, brewing her own pot of coffee to avoid troubling her servants, and sitting down to begin the days work. There's no question Catherine was behind the coup that led to her husband's overthrow and her eventual coronation as Empress Yekaterina Alekseyevna Romanova, aka Catherine II. Her enemies, however, saw things differently. Rumours of Catherine's private life had a small basis in the fact that she took many young lovers, even in old age. He died at the age of 52 in 1791. At first, she attempted to revise clerical studies, proposing a reform of religious schools. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. While the deeply entrenched system of Russian serfdomin which peasants were enslaved by and freely traded among feudal lordswas at odds with her philosophical values, Catherine recognized that her main base of support was the nobility, which derived its wealth from feudalism and was therefore unlikely to take kindly to these laborers emancipation. Adapted from his 2008 play of the same name, the ten-part miniseries is the brainchild of screenwriter Tony McNamara. [43] In 1762, he unilaterally abrogated the Treaty of Kyakhta, which governed the caravan trade between the two empires. I think Catherine realized that her own position and her own life [were] probably under threat, and so she acted., These tensions culminated in a July 9, 1762, coup. In 1769, a last major CrimeanNogai slave raid, which ravaged the Russian held territories in Ukraine, saw the capture of up to 20,000 slaves. Another theory argues that he died through injuries sustained from . Upon arriving in St. Petersburg in 1744, Sophie converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, adopted a Russian name and began learning to speak the language. Sophie's childhood was very uneventful. They saw a woman who slept her way to the top, a woman who was not meant to rule but stole the throne from her husband. She nationalised all of the church lands to help pay for her wars, largely emptied the monasteries, and forced most of the remaining clergymen to survive as farmers or from fees for baptisms and other services. [105][additional citation(s) needed], In 1785, Catherine approved the subsidising of new mosques and new town settlements for Muslims. This allowed the Russian government to control more people, especially those who previously had not fallen under the jurisdiction of Russian law. [78] For information about particular nations that interested her, she read Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's Memoirs de Chine to learn about the vast and wealthy Chinese empire that bordered her empire; Franois Baron de Tott's Memoires de les Turcs et les Tartares for information about the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean khanate; the books of Frederick the Great praising himself to learn about Frederick just as much as to learn about Prussia; and the pamphlets of Benjamin Franklin denouncing the British Crown to understand the reasons behind the American Revolution. 7 Reasons Catherine the Great Was So Great.