She's the historical woman people most love to tell dirty jokes about. Catherine the Great. We've heard she had an insatiable -- gobble, gobble -- appetite for sex. We've even heard she was into animals -- huge, hefty long-dong animals of the equine sort, and it has made for some nice puns on "a good ride." We've probably also heard that she died legs astraddle, crushed by a horse. The most graphic version has a hoist in it. As in, the hoist was designed to lower the horse onto her awaiting loins and it broke. Smoosh.
Ah, well, so much for the fantasies of Victorian preachers. It was Samuel Schmucker, an American Lutheran preacher who in 1855 cited Catherine the Great as "one of the most corrupt, sensual, and licentious of women." I guess he meant sensual in a bad way. Let's face it, very few of your "colorful" historical figures made it through the 19th century's gauntlet of moralizers without picking up a few nasty epithets.
So just how debauched was Russia's Catherine II after all? In some ways we moderns may be disappointed. Well, yes, she did in fact have 12 lovers that historians can prove. And it's likely the real number is much higher and includes the odd foreign dignitary like "Prince Charming," France's Prince de Ligne. But wait. Twelve lovers? Check the results of any purity poll to find that 12 is the average number of lovers the American woman will have over the course of a lifetime. Catherine lived in a different time. The bulk of her affairs happened between 1762 when her husband mysteriously died (OK, most certainly at the hands her then-lover -- a minor detail) and 1796. In other words, Catherine hanky pankied her way through palace favorites as George Washington froze his butt off along the Potomac and aristocratic heads rolled along the streets of Paris. The best of times, the worst of times, and also a time when the weaker sex, it was believed, would drive the world to wrack and ruin if their "nature" wasn't kept in check. In that context, Catherine may have seemed quite loose.
A lot of the saucy details of Catherine's "depravities" come from the writings of foreign ambassadors in the days when an ambassador didn't just come for a day and a dinner; he planted himself and grew roots. So we have to think of Catherine as the old-world equivalent of a movie star entertaining international paparazzi as house guests -- for months. But even though our sources are often no more reliable than the 18th century's version of the National Enquirer, historians have clung to these accounts. 300 year-old information is hard to come by. Besides, Catherine meticulously burned every letter she received from her lovers as she went along.
How she managed to carry on a love life at all is something many a modern day star might like to know. Not that anyone who was anyone at court was unaware of her affairs.
Still Catherine's sexual behavior around the palace was nothing we'd call daring. No orgies, no infamously lewd companions -- though she did have a bastard or two who lived quite openly at court. But even while entertaining guests in her private rooms or in her private carriage, Catherine would not tolerate off-color jokes. And yet there are visitors and courtiers on record calling her behavior with her lovers disgraceful. Why? Was she playing footsie under the table at state dinners? Copping a quick feel from alover behind the throne? No. The problem seems to have been those wayward glances. During a state affair, she might cast a quick glance at her paramour across the room, and guests recorded this "scandalous" behavior in their letters home. She was under strict laws of decorum.
What we can say of Catherine is that she needed the companionship of a man, companionship in a large sense. She preferred affairs of the heart. She once explained that the heart had a mind of its own and that she had given up on controlling it. However, she did admit to her lover and ever-after friend Potemkin that she'd had casual affairs -- out of desperation and loneliness. It seems also true that in the bedroom, she was, well, OK, rather robust. She liked it hard and hardy. "My head is like that of a cat in heat," she once wrote Potemkin. Some say she actually married him, and if she did, it was done in secret. She called him "husband" and "master" in her letters. Pet names, perhaps. At any rate, Potemkin became her most trusted minister; he became prince of the Crimea (after securing that region for her). And long after the relationship cooled -- they had two torrid years of passion -- he continued to execute her royal plans, she calmed his moods, she relied on his advice, he fostered and procured her ever-fresh supply of stud meat -- oops. Uh, yes, this is also true.
Catherine was at her best as a stateswoman and overall power-person when she had a warm bed to retreat to at night. So most people close to her knew it was in their best interests to keep her passions supplied. Potemkin, the amicable ex-lover, took charge of this duty. He hand-picked young (most always twenty-something) men, guardsmen (that is, the soldiered elite), dashing, bright, promising in statecraft. And with nice bods. Well, and, it appears, staying power. There is some evidence to suggest that Catherine's closest ladies in waiting actually gave the potential suitors a trial run to test their, well, whatever aspects of their virility Catherine wanted tested. "Vigor," according to the reports, was most certainly one of them.
A rather long line of young lovers followed Potemkin.
And Catherine was always good to her men in many ways. Even when one of her lovers betrayed her by getting engaged behind Catherine's back, she offered him the palace for his wedding and to boot, gave him a castle of his own. Henry VIII she was not.
Catherine's paramours, politely called "favorites," became official when they were installed in the "favorite's" quarters, a luxury suite right below her own. The suite came with a spiral staircase that quite coincidentally led from his to hers. Ah, discreet and easy access. No sooner was the gentleman installed in that room, when he underwent a meteoric rise at court. He suddenly found himself as a top minister, a general, or other position involving great national responsibility. If he lacked education, Catherine saw to it that he had the best tutors (Catherine liked them smart, cultured, and able to discourse in French literature). And when the thrill was gone, the lover vacated the favorite's room, often given an estate or castle, but with gobs of money and peasants (yes, they gave away peasants like livestock). Many of Catherine's lovers remained competent and devoted servants at the posts she'd groomed them for.
Of course, there is one aspect of Catherine's appetite that even we moderns may have trouble getting our sexual mores around -- and it's not about beasts. It's the fact that all Catherine's lovers from Potemkin's time on were 32 or younger. When she took on her last lover, Plato Zubov, she was a woman of 60. He was 22. They still had some form of intimacy at her death when she was 67 to his 29 -- a veritable Harold and Maude romance. The fact that we can think of only one such film in a 50 year film history, suggests that we may not be any more progressive regarding this taboo than Catherine's contemporary critics.
Only slightly less acceptable in those days than her penchant for young things would be the idea of a young man sleeping his way to the top. Even in our time, it might be cause for ridicule or embarrassment. In Catherine's time, it was truly scandalous. In one case, the young man's family disowned him in absolute disgust over his position as the Czarina's lover. The fact that he earned his titles and power through her was even more despicable. This was the 23 year-old Alexander (Sasha) Lanskoi. It was perhaps Catherine's most bittersweet relationship of all. She was settling happily into grand-motherhood and Sasha completed her intimate circle. In fact, he seems to have loved her. He offered Catherine family and political advice that smoothed out sticky situations, as opposed to advice that merely advanced himself. Other factions at court tried to buy him off -- he wouldn't be bought. Historians have combed the personal letters of the time for information or mention of Sasha Lanskoi, and despite the many mentions of his name, none had a bad word to say about him. Well, there was a doctor who cast aspersions on certain of the young man's qualities, hinting that Sasha regularly took an herbal sort of "Viagra" in order to satisfy Catherine in bed. Dr. Wickard was not a regular palace doctor, but a specialist called in when Sasha took fatally ill. Wickard's theory was that the prolonged use of this "Viagra" weakened Sasha's constitution. Whatever the case, Sasha died of the sudden illness at the age of 26. Other hostile members of the court suggested he may have been poisoned. More objective modern conjectures say that -- since reports told of his throat closing up until he had trouble breathing -- Sasha caught diphtheria. It is also said that Catherine sat with Sasha, nursing him right up to his death. Catherine was crushed, remained in bed for weeks and depressed for months. She had a church built where Sasha could be buried along with his entire family. Even after death, his family remained so hostile they refused to be buried in that church, leaving his body in the church alone.
That was in June. By September, Potemkin had selected another young man to introduce to the queen. Though this and successive relationships never reached the pitch and passion as that with Sasha, Catherine the Great continued on with her line of young men until her death in 1796. No, it really doesn't seem Catherine was very sluttish by our standards. Her sexual practices, other than the odd job of cradle-robbing, were not particularly off the map. But she drew heated criticism down through the centuries. Lucky for us, a lot changes in 250 years.