Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/244

232  1em  CATHERINE I., wife of Peter the Great of Russia, and after his death for two years (1725-27) empress of Russia, was the natural daughter of a country girl in Livonia. Being left utterly destitute when a mere child, she was brought up by a Lutheran pastor of Marienburg, named Gliick. About 1702, at a pretty early age, she was married to a Swedish dragoon, from whom, however, she was almost immediately separated by the vicissitudes of war. She never saw him again ; for she was carried off by the Russian forces, and was slave or mistress to more than one Russian general, last of all to Prince Menschikoff, in whose house she attracted the notice of the czar. The czar was struck by her beauty and good sense, and made her his mistress, and then his wife publicly in 1711. After that, in the same year, she performed a service to her husband for which she will always be remembered in history. In the campaign on the Pruth, Peter, with an excessive contempt of the generalship and other military qualities of the Turk*, had rashly placed himself in a position in which he was completely surrounded and cut off from all supplies. From this peril he was relieved by Catherine, who was expert enough to collect the necessary sum for bribing the Turkish general, and in this way to bring about a tolerable peace. Next year she was solemnly crowned empress at St Petersburg. She continued to be the faithful companion and adviser of the czar, till his death in 1725. After that event she was herself raised to the Russian throne, chiefly through the address of her former lord, Prince Menschikoff, who put himself at the head of a powerful party, and gained over the guards at the capital. Her reign of two years was in no wise remarkable. Menschikoff was her minister, and directed affairs almost at his pleasure. Catherine was by no means free from the vices then prevalent at the Russian court. She spent whole days in dissipation, which hastened her end. She died in 1727, being somewhere about forty years of age. She was evidently a woman of considerable insight and expertness, able to manage the 