Page:The Hero in History.djvu/127

Rh and had to hold it against a succession of pretenders. Such talent Catherine possessed to an extraordinary degree. She numbered some able men among her advisers and lieutenants, but they were completely subordinate to her purposes. Despite her amours there were no male de Pompadours in her entourage. Her eventfulness as a historic character was due to unique gifts of political intelligence.

It should be noted, however, that, as far as her domestic rule is concerned, at no point did she run counter to the interests of the large feudal landholders. There is no reason to doubt her early sincerity in espousing the ideas of Montesquieu, Beccaria, and the French Encyclopædists. Her abandonment of progressive social ideas was to some extent the result of her realization that there was no social class in Russia strong enough to support economic reforms that would have imperilled the position of the large landholders. Since she could not change the status quo, she decided to strengthen it at the cost of the peasants. Without her the emancipation of the serfs would probably have come sooner. But limited as her freedom of action was, she seems to have been an event-making woman, “every inch a ‘political being’ unmatched by anyone of her sex in modern history.”