Catherine I of Russia

Catherine I (Russian: Екатери́на I Алексе́евна - Ekaterina I Alekséievna, born Polish: Marta Helena Skavronska, later known as Marta Samuílovna Skavrónskaya; Jēkabpils, April 15, 1684-Saint Petersburg, May 17, 1727) was the second wife of Peter the Great and Czarina—officially, Empress—of the Empire. Russian from 1725 to 1727, when he died. It is believed that she was a Polish peasant born in Latvia in 1684, when it was a province of Sweden, the daughter of Samuel Skavronski and Elisabeth Moritz, who died in the plague epidemic of 1684. It has been speculated that they were runaway serfs, which would explain the attempts of subsequent governments to keep this story secret.

Youth

The life of Catherine I was considered by Voltaire almost as extraordinary as that of Peter the Great himself. There are no documents confirming her origins. She is said to have been born on April 15, 1684 (in the Julian calendar, April 5), she was originally named Marta Elena Skavronska. Marta was the daughter of Samuel Skavronski (later spelled Samuil Skavronsky), a Catholic peasant from the Two-Nation Republic born to parents from Minsk, who in 1680 married Dorothea Hahn in Jakobstadt. Her mother's name appears in at least one source as Elizabeth Moritz, the daughter of a Baltic German woman, and it is debated whether or not Moritz's father was a Swedish officer. It is likely that two stories were mixed up, and Swedish sources suggest that Elizabeth's story is probably incorrect. Some biographies claim that Marta's father was a gravedigger and handyman, while others speculate that he was a runaway landless serf.

Marta's parents died in the plague around 1689, leaving behind five children. According to one of the popular versions, at the age of three Marta was taken in by an aunt and sent to Marienburg (present-day Alūksne in Latvia, near the Estonian-Russian border), where she was raised by Johann Ernest. Glück, Lutheran pastor and educator who was the first to translate the Bible into Latvian.^{[citation needed]} There she worked as a maid, probably either a mop or a laundress. Nothing was done to give her an education, teach her to read and write, and she remained illiterate for the rest of her life.

Marta was considered a very beautiful young woman, and there are accounts that Mrs. Glück feared she would become involved with her son. At seventeen, she married a Swedish dragoon officer named Johan Cruse or Johann Rabbe, with whom she stayed for eight days in 1702, at which time the Swedish troops withdrew from Marienburg. When the Russian troops took the city, Pastor Glück offered to go to Moscow as a translator in the service of Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev, taking Marta with him.

There are unsubstantiated stories that Marta briefly worked in the victorious regiment's laundry, and also that she was introduced, in her underclothes, to Brigadier General Rudolph Felix Bauer, later Governor of Estonia, to be his mistress. She may have worked in the house of her superior, Sheremetev. It is not known if she was her mistress, or a maid who worked in the house.^{[citation needed ]} she returned to the Russian court with Sheremetev's army.

Later, she became a servant of Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, friend and courtier of Peter I, and first Governor of Saint Petersburg. Anecdotal sources suggest that he bought it. Whether the two were lovers or not is disputed, since Menshikov was already engaged to Daria Arsenieva, his future wife. It becomes clear that Menshikov and Marta formed a lifelong alliance.

It is possible that Menshikov, who was quite jealous of Pedro's attentions and knew his tastes, wanted to find him a lover that he could trust. In any case, in 1703, while visiting Menshikov at his home, Peter met Marta.^{[citation needed]} By 1704, she was firmly established in Peter's household as her lover, and bore him a son, Peter. Alekseevna). She and Daria Menshikova accompanied Peter and Menshikov on their military excursions.

Marriage and Family Life

Although there are no documents of this, it is said that Catherine and Pedro were secretly married between October 23 and December 1, 1707 in Saint Petersburg. They had twelve children, two of whom reached adulthood, Ana (born in 1708) and Isabel (born in 1709).

Peter had moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in 1703. While the city was being built, they lived in a three-room cottage, where she cooked and took care of the children, and he tended the garden as if they were an ordinary couple. ^{[citation needed]} When they moved into the palace, they kept it by surrounding it with a fence.

It was the most successful relationship of Pedro's life and their abundant correspondence shows that they were always very fond of each other. As a person, he was very energetic, compassionate, charming and always cheerful. She was able to calm Pedro down through her frequent fits of rage and was called upon to personally care for him during his epileptic seizures.

Empress

St. Petersburg in 1723.

Catherine went with Peter on his campaign to Pruth in 1711. It is said that Catherine saved Peter and his empire there, as recounted by Voltaire in his book Peter the Great. Surrounded by overwhelming numbers of Turkish troops, Catherine suggested that before surrendering, that her and the other women's jewelry be used in an effort to bribe the Ottoman Grand Vizier Baltacı Mehmet Pasha into allowing them to withdraw.

Mehmet allowed the withdrawal, where motivated by bribery or considerations of trade or diplomacy. In any case, Pedro recognized Catherine and remarried her (this time officially) in Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on February 9, 1712. Catherine was Peter's second wife; he had previously married and divorced Eudoxia Lopukhiná, whom he had locked up in a convent and with whom he had a son, Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich, whom he executed. After the wedding, Catherine assumed the title of her husband and became Tsarina. When Peter elevated the Russian tsarate to empire, Catherine became empress, being the first woman to hold this title: until then the Tsar's wife was known only as his consort (second, if Marina Mniszech's coronation by Dimitri I "The False" in 1606 as Tsarina of the Russian Tsarate, transformed into the Russian Empire in 1721). In 1724, she was appointed co-regent. Her husband instituted the Order of Santa Catalina on the occasion of her wedding.

However, coexistence was not always harmonious. For reasons of prestige and image, Pedro did not take her on his trips to Europe, which implied prolonged separations. The year before her death, Pedro and Catalina fell apart because of her support for Willian Mons, brother of Pedro's former lover, Anna, and brother of one of Catalina's ladies-in-waiting, Matriona Balk. He served as Catherine's secretary. Pedro had fought all his life to eliminate corruption in Russia. Catalina had great influence over who had access to her husband. Willem Mons and her sister Matriona had begun to sell her influence to those who wanted access to Catalina and, through her, to Pedro. Apparently this had been ignored by Catalina, who liked them both. Pedro discovered it and Willem Mons was executed and his sister Matriona exiled. She and Catalina did not speak to each other for several months. There were rumors that she and Mons were lovers, but there is no evidence of this. It is said that the severed head of Mons was placed inside a jar filled with alcohol, which is installed as a "decoration" in the bedroom that Pedro and Catalina share.

Succession to the throne as reigning empress

Heinrich Buchholz: Portrait of Catherine I of Russia (1684-1727)Oil of the 18th century

In 1724, Catherine was officially crowned and named co-ruler and reigning empress. During the reign of Pedro I, the reform of the Army was of great importance, which allowed people without a noble title the possibility of accessing the officer corps, thus ending the noble monopoly in those positions, and also appointing them to public positions, based only on in your competition. Peter died on January 28, 1725 (according to the Gregorian calendar) without designating a successor. Catherine represented the interests of the "new men," common people who had risen to positions of great power in Peter's time, based on their competence. A change in government would favor the entrenched aristocrats. So during a council meeting to decide on her successor, a coup was staged by Menshikov and others in which the guard regiments with whom Catherine was very popular proclaimed her ruler of Russia, giving her the title of empress. Evidence of support was "produced" by Peter's secretary and the Bishop of Pskov, the two "new men" in order to see Catherine seize power. The real power, however, lay with Menshikov, Pyotr Tolstoy, and other members of the Supreme Privy Council. She had to face the opposition of the clergy and the boyars, who were against her for the reforms carried out, and that of the common people who supported the rights of Prince Peter, son of Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich. It was the beginning of an era in the history of Russia characterized by continuous coups d'état and by the government of favorites.

During her reign she continued her husband's work, supported above all by Menshikov, who was the virtual governor, and following the advice of friends and favourites. In 1726, he created the Supreme Privy Council (Верховный тайный совет), to which he transferred a large part of the powers that the Senate had until then, which caused dissensions in the nobility that soon divided into multiple parties, while Catherine tried to get closer to them naming Prince Peter successor. She found all four of her siblings and took them to Russia, giving them the newly created titles of counts and countesses.

In foreign policy, he supported the Austro-Spanish league, to support his son-in-law, the Duke of Holstein, married to Princess Ana, parents of the future Pedro III, against England.

He supported the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, founded in 1724 by Peter I, whose faculty included mathematicians Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli, and built a large number of bridges in Saint Petersburg. The city of Yekaterinburg is named after him. In general, his policies were reasonable and cautious.

Death

She died two years after Peter, in Saint Petersburg in 1727, aged 43, and is buried in the Cathedral, inside the Peter and Paul Fortress. Tuberculosis, diagnosed as an abscess in the lungs, caused her early death.

Valuation and legacy

equestrian portrait of Catherine

Catherine was the first woman to rule the Russian Empire, paving the way legally for a century dominated almost entirely by women, including her daughter Elizabeth and her granddaughter-in-law, Catherine the Great, all of whom continued the policies of Peter the Great modernizing Russia.

At the time of Peter's death, the Imperial Russian Army, made up of 130,000 men and an additional 100,000 Cossacks, was easily the largest in Europe. However, military spending proved ruinous for the Russian economy, consuming around 65% of the government's annual budget. Since the country was at peace, Catherine decided to reduce military spending. For most of her reign, Catherine I was controlled by her advisors. However, on this particular point, the reduction of military expenditures, Catherine was able to get away with it. The result was relief from the tax burden on the peasants, which led to Catherine I's reputation being degraded. a just ruler.^{[citation needed]}

The Supreme Privy Council concentrated power in the hands of one party, and in this way was an executive innovation. In foreign affairs, Russia reluctantly joined the Austro-Spanish league to defend the interests of Catherine's son-in-law, the Duke of Holstein, against Great Britain.

Catherine gave her name to the Catherinehof near Saint Petersburg, and built the first bridges in the new capital. She was also the first royal owner of the Tsarskoye Selo estate, where Catherine's Palace still bears her name.

It also gave its name to Kadriorg Park and the subsequent neighborhood in Tallinn, Estonia, which now houses the Estonian presidential palace.

In general, Catalina's policies were reasonable and cautious. The story of her humble origins was regarded by later generations of tsars as a state secret.

Offspring

With her husband Peter I of Russia, she had twelve children, all of whom died in infancy, except Anne and Elizabeth:

• Pedro Petróvich (1704-1707), died in childhood.
• Pablo Petróvich (1705-1707), died in childhood.
• Catalina Petrovna (December 1706-June 1708), he died in childhood.
• Grand Duchess Ana Petrovna (1708-1728), married to Carlos Federico de Holstein-Gottorp and mother of Tsar Peter III of Russia.
• Grand Duchess Isabel Petrovna (1709-1762), Empress and autocrat of All Russia. Married in secret with Alekséi Razumovski, no offspring.
• Grand Duchess Maria Petrovna (1713-1715), died in childhood.
• Grand Duchess Margarita Petrovna (1714-1715), died in childhood.
• Grand Duke Pedro Petróvich (1715-1719), died in childhood.
• Grand Duke Pablo Petróvich (1717-1717), he died young.
• Grand Duchess Natalia Petrovna of Russia (1718-1725), died at age 6.
• Grand Duke Pedro Petróvich (1723-1723), he died young.
• Pablo Petróvich (1724-1724), he died young.

Brothers

On Pedro's death, Catalina found his four siblings, Cristina, Ana, Carlos, and Federico, gave them the newly created titles of count and countess, and took them to Russia.

• Krystyna Skowrońska, renamed ^{[chuckles]required]} Cristina (in Russian): .) Samuílovna Skavronskaya (1687 - 14 April 1729), had married Simon Heinrich (in Russian: Симон Гейнрих(1672-1728) and their descendants became the counts of Guéndrikov (Germany).
• Anna Skowrońska, renowned Ana Samuílovna Skavronskaya, had married a Michael-Joachim N and his descendants became the Counts Efimovsky.
• Karol Skowroński, renamed Karel Samuílovich Skavronsky, was converted into a count of the Russian Empire on January 5, 1727 and chambelan of the imperial court; he had married Maria Ivanovna, a Russian woman, of whom he had descendants who became extinct in the male line in 1793.
• Fryderyk Skowroński, renowned Fiódor Samuílovich Skavronsky, was converted into the count of the Russian Empire on January 5, 1727 and married twice: with N, a Lithuanian woman, and with Ekaterina Rodionovna Sabúrova, without having children of any of those marriages.

Ancestors