The Council met while Peter lay dying, and the spokesmen of the majority confidently proposed his grandson for the throne. Tolstoi attacked them, and proposed Catherine; and after a long and furious debate Catherine was declared Autocrat of all the Russias. They found her weeping at Peter’s bedside, and there was a rush to take the oath. Moscow was mutinous for a time, but the army was won by generous treatment, and the country followed. The guards were provided with new uniforms and pay, and it was decreed that in future soldiers must not be employed upon such work as the making of canals. For the mass of the people, too, a great relief was afforded by the reduction, by one third, of the crushing poll-tax which Peter had imposed; and a political amnesty brought back thousands to their homes from the squalid jails or the frozen wastes of the north and of Sibera.
Catherine gladly suffered the power she had obtained to pass into the hands of the nobles who had fought for it. We may, in fact, dismiss her rule, in its personal aspect, with the remark that she did not rule at all. She had the wealth and security which she desired, and her one concern was to retain them through all the quarrels and intrigues of her court, and, if possible, transmit them to one of her daughters. As trouble increased, she retired more and more to the privacy of her luxurious apartments and sought oblivion in intoxication.
A half dozen nobles who had been trained in the school of Peter formed a small aristocratic clique which governed the country and sustained some of the late Tsar’s innovations. Of these Menshikoff was, naturally, the most powerful and most prominent, and the haughtiness of the former vender of pies rose so high that it is said to have even inspired him with a hope of attaining the crown. He now acquired wealth without restriction, and promoted rivals to distant employments or punished critics as if he were already the Autocrat. The bribing of the army and the reduction of taxation left the exchequer in a parlous condition. Troops were disbanded, and superfluous officials removed, but the treasury still cried for funds, and the corrupt tax-gatherers were hardly checked.
A good deal of discontent arose, and it found a spokesman in one of the most powerful prelates, the Archbishop of Novgorod. The prelate had supported the election of Catherine, but he had expected her to show her gratitude by reviving the patriarchate and entrusting it to him. Quite possibly some such promise had been made. It was a world of consummate knavery. Theodosius, therefore, when he saw that there was no intention of reviving the patriarchate, discovered, and angrily declared, that it was little less than a scandal to have a woman at the head of the Russian Church. Menshikoff made short work of the hypocritical zealot, whose ways were notorious. It was soon established that Theodosius had appropriated for domestic use the gold and silver vessels of the altar, and had melted down such ornaments as could not be put to profane use. He was disgraced and banished.