Age of Extremes Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley


Age of Extremes

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I'm travelling through Russia

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to learn about the most powerful European royal family

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since medieval times.

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The Romanovs.

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I've seen how the victories of Peter the Great won him control

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of the Baltic Sea, placing Russia firmly on the world stage.

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At home, Peter built the magnificent city of St Petersburg.

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And he dragged his country, kicking and screaming,

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into the 18th century.

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Peter the Great was a hard act to follow.

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But in the century following his death,

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two of his successors would bring Russia glory

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that Peter could only have dreamt of.

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The era was dominated by Catherine the Great,

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possibly the most powerful woman in history.

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She was super-bright and super-ambitious

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and Russia would enjoy a golden age during her reign.

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Famed for her collections, both of art and of lovers...

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..Catherine's military success transformed Russia

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into a major European power.

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Not bad for a ruler without a single drop of Russian blood.

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Catherine's grandson, Alexander I, was forced to defend her legacy

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when Europe collapsed into turmoil.

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But Alexander would save the continent

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from the mightiest military leader of the age - Napoleon.

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And he'd even lead Russian forces onto the streets of Paris.

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But these extraordinary achievements took place

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against a turbulent backdrop.

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There were rebellions and murders and military disasters.

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This is the story of the second great age of the Romanovs -

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an age of extremes.

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This is the 18th-century palace of Peterhof,

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overlooking the Gulf of Finland.

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It was founded by Peter the Great -

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one of only two Romanov monarchs to have been given that title.

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The other was Catherine the Great.

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She inherited the palace when she seized the throne in 1762,

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nearly 40 years after Peter's death.

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But I bet Catherine never did what I'm about to do.

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-Let's go.

-Thank you. Are we going to hold hands all the way?

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Just this place.

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-Very gallant. I like it.

-Be careful.

-Uh-huh.

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'I'm going not just behind the scenes, but beneath them.

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'And I'm not sure that I've dressed appropriately.'

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-Down that hole?

-Yes.

-That's really quite small and wet?

-Yes.

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-OK.

-Be careful. Be careful.

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-Watch your head.

-This is good.

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Hey, hey, hey!

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'Peterhof has one of the biggest sets of fountains in the world.

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'Remarkably, all of them powered by natural springs and gravity.

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'Not by pump, as I'd expected.'

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BOTH: Five, four, three, two, one.

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-Go!

-GO!

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There are 100 fountains here, just in the cascade area,

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and I think my favourite is this golden frog.

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Catherine first saw Peterhof and its fountains in 1744.

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At the time, Peter the Great's daughter Elizabeth was on the throne.

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Russia was enjoying an economic boom...

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..partly due to the lucrative Baltic trade routes

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that Peter had opened up.

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So Elizabeth had lots of money to indulge her taste for splendour.

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She had a tame architect, an Italian called Bartolomeo Rastrelli.

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And here, at the Palace of Peterhof,

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she set him off on a major rebuilding project.

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The Romanovs wanted palaces that rivalled

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the finest French royal buildings, like Versailles.

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The French were seen by Russia's elite

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as the standard setters for taste and art.

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But this strikes me as being slightly too lavish.

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Almost gaudy?

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You can't help sensing the chip on the Romanovs' shoulder,

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their need to convince foreign diplomats that Russia was

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a sophisticated European country, not some backward Eastern despotism.

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Rastrelli created a series of grand palaces for the Romanovs.

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There was the magnificent Winter Palace in St Petersburg -

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now home of the Hermitage Museum.

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The Catherine Palace was named after Elizabeth's mother,

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who'd succeeded Peter the Great to the throne.

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But who was going to inherit all this Baroque bling

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when Elizabeth was gone?

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Elizabeth never married.

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There were rumours of illegitimate children, given away to be

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brought up by servants but she never had an acknowledged son or daughter.

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So she exercised her Russian sovereign's right

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to choose her own successor.

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She alighted upon her nephew - the only trouble was,

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he was a 14-year-old German boy who'd never set foot in Russia.

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His name was Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

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He was a grandson of Peter the Great through his mother.

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Elizabeth now needed to find young Peter a bride.

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She settled on a minor, but well-connected, German princess

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called Sophie Friederike Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst.

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So in 1744, Sophie came to Russia

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and adopted a Russian name, Yekaterina -

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or Catherine.

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But this teenage union quickly became an unhappy one.

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Peter was disfigured by smallpox,

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yet still managed to embarrass his wife by having a mistress.

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Catherine claimed that he was a twisted voyeur

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who even tortured animals.

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When she came to write her memoirs, Catherine said how long and dismal

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the summers had been at the palace of Peterhof.

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She didn't get on with her aunt-in-law, the Empress Elizabeth,

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nor her husband, who was only interested in practising

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military drills with his very long-suffering entourage.

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So Catherine instead turned to reading,

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particularly the philosophers of the French Enlightenment,

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Diderot and Voltaire.

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This was heady stuff for a member of an autocratic ruling family.

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One of the most significant factors of Catherine's personality

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that came out when she was very young and throughout her life

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was she really believed in the self-improvement.

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She had this great urge to be educated

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and that, for a woman of her time, was unusual

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and the determination to find out for herself,

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for learning as much as she could.

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She enjoyed the sense of being at the forefront of European thought

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and bringing it to this rather... place she perceived rather backward.

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By her early 30s, Catherine had given birth to a son

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and to a short-lived daughter.

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And she'd started taking lovers of our own.

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He was just a warm-up. We'll pass over him.

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But this is Stanislaw Poniatowski, the future king of Poland.

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He was witty and charming and everything that her husband wasn't.

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By 1761, though, she'd moved on to Grigori Orlov.

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He was a dashing young artillery officer.

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It was said that he would dance gigantic dances

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and make gigantic love.

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His relationship with Catherine got very serious.

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It started to go beyond just a romantic intrigue.

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Catherine and Orlov agreed that Peter just wasn't up to the job

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of ruling the country.

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But in 1761, Peter succeeded to the throne, following Elizabeth's death.

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He was now the emperor.

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What he didn't know, though, was that his empress was plotting against him.

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When Peter actually did succeed,

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um, it quickly became clear he wasn't going to survive.

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He annoyed people - the military, the church -

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and he was a disaster from the start.

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What one is aware of with Catherine

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is that she had an enormous self belief.

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Having educated herself,

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she was quite sure that she could run this enormous country

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and she could improve it.

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The intrigue came to a head on the morning of 28 June, 1762.

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Catherine was woken in her bed at Peterhof with the news

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that a coup was already under way.

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Now events began to move at headlong speed.

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Catherine came racing through these palace grounds

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to get to her carriage, to be taken to St Petersburg.

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She didn't even pause to get ready.

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She had to have her hair done in the coach on the way.

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When she got to St Petersburg, she was declared sovereign

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and her husband Peter - well, he was caught napping.

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When he got to hear about what was going on, it was too late.

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He'd lost his crown.

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In tears, Peter stepped down.

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He'd reigned for just six months.

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Within a few days, he was rather conveniently dead.

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Officially the reason was haemorrhoidal colic

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but it was more likely murder.

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The nature, if any, of Catherine's involvement remains a mystery.

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Catherine was now the most powerful woman in the world.

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She was the sole ruler of Russia.

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And despite all of her intellectual interest,

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she had shown utter ruthlessness in grabbing the throne.

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But don't forget that she wasn't a real Russian.

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She'd only married into the Romanov family.

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It was going to be a considerable challenge

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for her to hold on to her power.

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Catherine ensured that she had a formal coronation

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as soon as possible, to seal her legitimacy.

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In the magnificent Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg,

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once home to Catherine's personal art collection,

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there's a portrait by the Danish artist, Vigilius Eriksen,

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that captures the new empress in all her coronation finery.

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Catherine had a new crown and orb designed for the coronation.

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And she's sporting these rather wonderful robes

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embroidered with the emblem of Imperial Russia -

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the double-headed eagle.

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What do you think can have been going through her mind at her coronation?

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On the one hand, she was an impostor. She was German, after all.

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It was only through sleight of hand that she had that crown on her head.

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On the other hand, there's something very attractively modern

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about this 18th-century woman

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so relentlessly pursuing power and success.

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And this meant relentlessly managing every single aspect of her brand.

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Catherine was brilliant at using her clothes to create her personal image.

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She managed to convey all the different things that people expected

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of a modern female Russian sovereign,

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as you can see in her surviving dresses at the Hermitage Museum.

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Nina, when did Catherine the Great wear this dress?

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Catherine the Great wore it during the festivals of the Guard regiments

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because she was a Chief of Guards regiment.

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It is uniform because of colour, because of numbers of buttons.

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-Ah, the officers have the same number of buttons?

-The same number, yes.

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-The shape of collar is also...

-Ah, it has the collar of a man's uniform?

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Yes, like in men's uniform.

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Um...

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And in the back, you can see very interesting details.

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-Ah, so this shape...

-The shape of the back...

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-That's like a man's coat.

-Yes.

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-And two details decorated with the braids.

-Yes.

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Also like a man's uniform.

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It's also the dress of a woman who looks to Europe, isn't it?

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Yes, of course.

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The French influence

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is in the shape of the sleeves.

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-Yes.

-You can see.

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-And, of course, panniers.

-Oh, the panniers.

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They're shaped like that? Yes, yes, I see that.

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-And is the silk French?

-No, the silk is Russian.

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Catherine the Great ordered to use only Russian silk

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in the costumes of the Russian Imperial Court.

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So, Nina, this is a fantastic dress.

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It's the dress of an empress, also of a male army officer,

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also of somebody who's very elegant, who loves Europe,

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but also the dress of a true Russian.

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-Yes.

-All in one!

-All in one!

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Back in the Peterhof Palace, Catherine can be seen

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wearing the Royal trousers in another portrait by Vigilius Eriksen.

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But although Catherine's military uniforms were purely ceremonial,

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she knew that her reputation, both in Russia and abroad,

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would be earned by military success.

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Her first great test came just six years into her reign.

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In 1768, Turkey declared war, threatening Russia from the south.

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On land, Russian troops could match the Turks,

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but Russia lacked naval power

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in the crucial Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.

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Russia's only fleet was the one Peter the Great had built

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in the Baltic more than 1,000 miles away from where it was now needed.

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Catherine's lover and closest adviser, Grigory Orlov,

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now made a bold but risky proposal.

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Catherine gave it the go-ahead.

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The Russian fleet was to be cut in two

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and one part of it was to go south, down through the Baltic,

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then all around western France and Spain

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and in through the Strait of Gibraltar.

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Then it would become, by very definition,

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Russia's Mediterranean fleet.

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In August 1769,

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the breakaway fleet left Russia on its epic journey.

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Finally, nearly a year later, in June 1770,

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the Russian ships, under the command of Grigory Orlov's brother, Alexis,

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took the Turkish fleet by surprise off the coast of Anatolia.

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The Battle of Chesma Bay became

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one of the most famous military engagements in Russian history.

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The Russians wiped out the Turkish fleet.

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9,000 Turkish sailors were killed, but the Russians lost only 30.

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EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE

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Russia's staggering victory

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was the public relations coup of a lifetime for Catherine.

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Now, in paintings like this one by Heinrich Buchholz,

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she could present herself as the true heir

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to the man who had built Imperial Russia.

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This picture celebrates a triumph by her fleet over the Turks.

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Here are the boats in the boat yards

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and here are some very unhappy Turks

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being marched through Saint Petersburg.

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And over here in the corner is Peter the Great himself

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being asked to admire this image

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of Catherine being carried through the skies by Fame.

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And he certainly is admiring her. Look what he's doing with his hands.

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He's saying, "Wow, Catherine! Haven't you done well?"

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And while Catherine never led armies into battle,

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she found other ways to lead from the front.

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Because the Russian people faced an even deadlier threat than Turkey.

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This enemy was ravaging Europe and it spared neither peasant nor monarch.

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It was smallpox.

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Catherine was rightly terrified that she or her son, Paul,

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might catch the disease.

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But word reached her that an English physician, Thomas Dimsdale,

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was achieving unprecedented success with a controversial method

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of smallpox inoculation.

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The method is called variolation

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and it involves scratching the skin, opening up the skin, and inserting

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some part of the disease.

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So effectively, you are infecting the patient with smallpox.

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And that, of course, makes it very risky.

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It's one of the reasons why it divided the enlightened world.

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Many mathematicians, for example,

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objected to on the grounds of probability theory.

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They thought that, sooner or later,

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people are going to die from this operation.

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Catherine decided that the risk was worth taking.

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Dimsdale was invited to St Petersburg.

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There, he found a suitable sample of smallpox

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with which to inoculate the empress.

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But it was all very hush-hush.

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Late one night, Dimsdale was brought into the palace

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through a secret door, and in Catherine's rooms, he inoculated her.

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Now, a lot of her contemporaries would have thought

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that she was mad to do this.

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She could have been infected, she could have died.

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But she'd looked at the scientific evidence

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and she was happy to run the risk.

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She even had Orlov and her son Paul inoculated too.

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And when it became clear that everything had gone well,

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the news was proclaimed. Other people started doing it.

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Inoculation caught on and countless lives were saved.

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Her smallpox inoculation shows Catherine behaving

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like a true enlightened monarch, embracing science,

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banishing superstition, improving the lot of her people.

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And this room in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg

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is almost a shrine to Catherine, the great progressive.

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These well-turned-out young ladies on the walls were pupils

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at the rather wonderfully named Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens,

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which Catherine founded in 1764.

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Its stated purpose was to raise "educated women, good mothers,

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"and useful members of family and society".

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It was the first proper educational establishment for women in Russia.

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Catherine was so proud of her girls that she had these portraits

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by Dmitry Levitzky commissioned to show them off.

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This statue presents Catherine in the guise of Minerva,

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the Roman goddess of wisdom and icon of the Enlightenment.

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A horn of plenty overflows.

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Her hand rests on an open book of legislation,

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and the sculptor, Fedot Shubin, has tucked Catherine's crown,

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the conventional symbol of royal power,

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discreetly away round the back.

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But none of this disguises the fact

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that for all of her enlightened leanings,

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Catherine still had the absolute power of a despot.

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And she was in no hurry to give it up.

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I don't think Catherine would have seen

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a contradiction between Enlightenment values and her powers.

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For a start, she would dispute that she was a despot.

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She considered that her absolute power was tempered

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by laws within Russia, by institutions within Russia,

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which prevented Russia from succumbing to arbitrary rule.

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And as an absolute ruler, I think

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she thought that she was in the best position to implement laws

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which would be in the spirit of the Enlightenment.

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In 1767, just five years into her reign,

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Catherine embarked on an ambitious nationwide attempt

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to turn Enlightenment principles into actual laws.

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She convened a special legislative commission

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with representatives ranging from nobles to peasants,

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drawn from all across the country.

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Catherine herself wrote the commission

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a lengthy set of instructions, known in Russian as the Nakaz.

0:24:230:24:27

She declared that all citizens should be equal before the law,

0:24:290:24:34

that torture should be banned,

0:24:340:24:36

liberty was her central theme.

0:24:360:24:39

For a while, Catherine looked more forward thinking than

0:24:440:24:47

any of her European counterparts

0:24:470:24:50

and she made sure that they knew it.

0:24:500:24:52

The Nakaz was translated into French and German.

0:24:520:24:56

But actually, Catherine had already watered down

0:24:580:25:01

her original plans for the Nakaz.

0:25:010:25:03

In particular, the reform of serfdom.

0:25:030:25:07

In her first draft of the Nakaz,

0:25:090:25:11

her great instruction to the legislative commission,

0:25:110:25:14

in 1767, there was a chapter which implied

0:25:140:25:17

that serfs ought to be freed,

0:25:170:25:20

or at least, some of them ought to be freed, gradually.

0:25:200:25:22

And this, when it was read by her advisers, was just thought

0:25:220:25:25

far too revolutionary, and Catherine was, I think,

0:25:250:25:28

genuinely surprised that even some of her closest friends,

0:25:280:25:31

some of the most enlightened people in the empire,

0:25:310:25:34

were so reluctant to do anything about serfdom. It took her aback.

0:25:340:25:37

But it made her realise the extent to which serfdom

0:25:370:25:40

just underpins everything in the Russian Empire.

0:25:400:25:43

Catherine's failure to address the continuing existence of serfdom

0:25:440:25:49

meant that millions of people remained

0:25:490:25:52

little better than the slaves of landowners.

0:25:520:25:54

Their plight now helped fuel the greatest domestic threat

0:25:560:26:00

to Catherine's reign.

0:26:000:26:02

In 1773, a Cossack called Emelian Pugachev

0:26:030:26:08

sparked a provincial revolt.

0:26:080:26:10

It spread...quickly.

0:26:110:26:13

Pugachev's idea was to pretend to be the deposed tsar,

0:26:150:26:19

Peter III, Catherine's late husband.

0:26:190:26:22

His line was that he'd just been away, he'd been in Egypt,

0:26:220:26:26

but now, he was back.

0:26:260:26:28

He very quickly gathered around him

0:26:280:26:31

a massive movement of Russia's disenfranchised.

0:26:310:26:34

Pugachev said that as the true tsar,

0:26:350:26:37

he would grant the serfs all kinds of new rights

0:26:370:26:41

and that they should rise up against their evil landlords.

0:26:410:26:45

They did this.

0:26:450:26:47

And in the resulting bloodbath, more than 1,500 nobles were killed,

0:26:470:26:52

half of them, women and children.

0:26:520:26:54

Panic now gripped St Petersburg.

0:26:570:27:00

Catherine was forced to find a military solution

0:27:000:27:04

to a civilian problem.

0:27:040:27:05

Soldiers and top commanders were switched from fighting Turks

0:27:050:27:10

to fighting their fellow Russians in rebellious areas.

0:27:100:27:13

It was nearly two years before the revolt was finally quashed.

0:27:150:27:19

Pugachev was taken to Moscow in a cage.

0:27:210:27:24

Then he was hanged and his body quartered,

0:27:240:27:27

which in Russia means that the limbs were lopped off.

0:27:270:27:30

The immediate threat was over.

0:27:300:27:33

But how was Catherine going to respond to this rebellion?

0:27:330:27:36

With reform or with repression?

0:27:360:27:39

The Pugachev revolt was a great shock to Catherine

0:27:420:27:45

and particularly the sense that this could happen in this country,

0:27:450:27:49

that so much of it was out of her control.

0:27:490:27:52

And her response was to try to spread her control

0:27:520:27:57

and so she brought in various local government reforms and wanted...

0:27:570:28:01

Again, it's this great desire to educate.

0:28:010:28:04

The fact that people could believe that this man was the Tsar

0:28:040:28:08

that had come back to life...

0:28:080:28:10

She was horrified and so her urge was to spread her control,

0:28:110:28:17

to improve education,

0:28:170:28:19

to make sure that local government was properly reformed.

0:28:190:28:22

It certainly wasn't to abolish serfdom.

0:28:220:28:25

Catherine had sacrificed the rights of the serfs

0:28:280:28:31

to keep the nobility on her side,

0:28:310:28:33

in spite of her professed Enlightenment values.

0:28:330:28:37

And nowhere were the contradictions of her reign more evident

0:28:370:28:41

than at the summer palaces of the wealthiest nobles.

0:28:410:28:44

The Kuskovo Palace and estate, near Moscow,

0:28:480:28:51

belonged to the Sheremetev family.

0:28:510:28:53

By the late 18th century,

0:28:560:28:58

they were the most important patrons of the arts outside St Petersburg.

0:28:580:29:02

Taking their lead from Catherine herself,

0:29:050:29:08

the Sheremetevs filled their palace with European treasures,

0:29:080:29:12

like these Flemish tapestries.

0:29:120:29:15

But it was the concerts and operas staged here that made Kuskovo famous,

0:29:150:29:20

bringing the arts to a wider audience than just the elite.

0:29:200:29:25

Ludmila, what was it like in the 1770s,

0:29:260:29:29

when Count Sheremetev had his big concerts?

0:29:290:29:33

SHE ANSWERS IN RUSSIAN

0:29:330:29:36

But the performers, they weren't

0:29:500:29:52

the sort of professional actors and musicians that we think of today.

0:29:520:29:56

So the serf children were taken at seven or eight from their families?

0:30:180:30:22

The Sheremetevs' star performer was Praskovia Kovalyova.

0:30:460:30:51

Despite her serf origins,

0:30:510:30:53

she became one of the most celebrated opera singers in Russia.

0:30:530:30:56

Catherine the Great herself heard Praskovia perform at Kuskovo.

0:30:580:31:02

Praskovia also won the heart of Count Sheremetev's son, Nikolai.

0:31:050:31:10

After a long affair, they secretly married.

0:31:100:31:13

These mounds are all that remain of the open-air theatre,

0:31:180:31:22

where Praskovia and her fellow serfs performed.

0:31:220:31:25

Now, you might think this sounds awfully romantic.

0:31:300:31:34

The beautiful Praskovia standing here on the stage,

0:31:340:31:37

singing a heartfelt aria to the Count, her secret lover,

0:31:370:31:42

in the audience over there.

0:31:420:31:44

But it isn't romantic, it's creepy,

0:31:440:31:46

when you consider where the balance of power between them lay.

0:31:460:31:50

Count Sheremetev owned Praskovia and her entire family,

0:31:500:31:55

along with the rest of his 200,000 other serfs.

0:31:550:31:59

In a world where serfdom existed,

0:31:590:32:01

there were so many opportunities for exploitation,

0:32:010:32:04

particularly sexual exploitation of the female serfs.

0:32:040:32:08

It hardly bears thinking about.

0:32:080:32:11

Of course, performers, artists and musicians made up

0:32:200:32:23

just a tiny fraction of Russia's serf population.

0:32:230:32:26

Most of them continued to work in the fields, driving the Russian economy.

0:32:290:32:34

And they made up the bulk of the Russian army,

0:32:350:32:38

fuelling the expansion of Catherine's empire,

0:32:380:32:42

an expansion that was extraordinary in both its speed and scale.

0:32:420:32:47

Catherine annexed large stretches of Belarus and Lithuania.

0:32:520:32:57

Poland became a Russian dependency.

0:32:570:33:01

And crucially, she seized the Crimea.

0:33:010:33:04

Just as Peter the Great founded St Petersburg

0:33:040:33:07

to secure access to the Baltic,

0:33:070:33:09

Catherine now founded the major ports

0:33:090:33:12

of Sevastopol and Odessa to guarantee Russia access to the Black Sea.

0:33:120:33:17

Countless Russian and foreign lives were lost in the process,

0:33:220:33:27

but Catherine doesn't seem to have been much troubled by this.

0:33:270:33:31

But the other great powers of Europe WERE troubled.

0:33:320:33:35

They knew that Russia had now become a key player in world affairs.

0:33:350:33:40

Catherine had to be courted.

0:33:420:33:45

She had to be feared.

0:33:450:33:46

Here's a British satirical print from 1791 called

0:33:500:33:54

An Imperial Stride!

0:33:540:33:57

And it shows Catherine the Great of Russia striding from Russia

0:33:570:34:01

right over to Constantinople.

0:34:010:34:03

Look, she's got her toe on the tip of a crescent moon.

0:34:030:34:06

Meanwhile, all the European great powers are understandably

0:34:060:34:10

worried about Russia's expansion.

0:34:100:34:12

But they're also taking the opportunity

0:34:120:34:14

to look up Catherine's skirt.

0:34:140:34:16

Here's King George III of Great Britain, for example,

0:34:160:34:19

and he's saying, "What?! What?! What a prodigious expansion!"

0:34:190:34:24

"Never saw anything like it,"

0:34:260:34:28

says Louis XVI of France.

0:34:280:34:30

While the Sultan of Turkey declares,

0:34:310:34:33

"The whole Turkish army wouldn't satisfy her."

0:34:330:34:36

I think it's inevitable that Catherine, as a powerful woman,

0:34:390:34:42

was targeted with sexual slanders.

0:34:420:34:45

And it is true that she had quite a lot of lovers.

0:34:450:34:49

Although he shouldn't be here,

0:34:510:34:53

there isn't any truth to the rumours of her and the horse.

0:34:530:34:57

Though they are quite persistent. But she had no time for horses.

0:34:570:35:00

She was just too busy with all these men.

0:35:000:35:03

In 1774, she began an affair with a Guards officer, Grigori Potemkin.

0:35:040:35:11

Catherine called him "My colossus, my golden cockerel, my tiger".

0:35:110:35:17

He rose to be the commander in chief of the Russian army

0:35:170:35:21

and effectively, her co-ruler.

0:35:210:35:23

Potemkin was the love of Catherine's life.

0:35:240:35:28

It's even possible that they had a secret marriage.

0:35:280:35:31

And his influence endured even as she took other lovers.

0:35:310:35:35

As she got older, they tended to be Guards officers,

0:35:350:35:39

much younger than she was.

0:35:390:35:41

When she was 60, she took a last lover, Platon Zubov.

0:35:410:35:45

He was 21.

0:35:450:35:47

Go, Catherine!

0:35:470:35:49

It's amazing that she still began each relationship

0:35:520:35:56

with massive hope that this was the one

0:35:560:35:59

and there was that romantic,

0:35:590:36:01

not necessarily sexual sense, as she got old,

0:36:010:36:04

but very romantic - this person, I can love, he's going to love me.

0:36:040:36:08

There's also increasingly the sense

0:36:090:36:12

that they're largely for companionship.

0:36:120:36:15

She used to love walking through her art collection,

0:36:150:36:18

going through her collection of cameos, poring over them,

0:36:180:36:21

cataloguing them together.

0:36:210:36:23

And so, you get a sense of platonic enjoyment,

0:36:230:36:28

that brief time in her day

0:36:280:36:30

when she could relax and feel that she could be herself.

0:36:300:36:35

But constantly, that need to be loved.

0:36:350:36:37

Catherine's other great passion was her palaces.

0:36:430:36:46

But unlike the grand statements of the Winter Palace and Peterhof,

0:36:460:36:51

her own commissions have a more tranquil atmosphere.

0:36:510:36:54

The Catherine Palace, south of St Petersburg,

0:36:550:36:58

was originally built by the Empress Elizabeth in a Baroque style.

0:36:580:37:02

But Catherine employed a Scottish architect, Charles Cameron,

0:37:020:37:07

to add on a beautiful, classically inspired annexe,

0:37:070:37:11

more in tune with her own tastes.

0:37:110:37:14

Although the rooms are inspired by classical architecture,

0:37:240:37:28

they're constructed with a whole rainbow of Russian materials,

0:37:280:37:32

like the marble...

0:37:320:37:34

..the jasper...

0:37:370:37:38

..and the porphyry.

0:37:420:37:45

Although they're small in scale, they are incredibly rich.

0:37:480:37:52

When they were complete,

0:37:520:37:54

Catherine walked through with her architect, Mr Cameron,

0:37:540:37:57

admiring them, but she was also heard to sigh,

0:37:570:38:01

"Oh, but the cost! The cost!"

0:38:010:38:05

The gallery also offered Catherine the perfect vantage point

0:38:120:38:17

to look out over her English-style landscape gardens,

0:38:170:38:21

a fashion that swept Europe in the late-18th century.

0:38:210:38:25

English garden design had become another of her passions.

0:38:280:38:32

She tried to seduce the British royal gardener, Mr Capability Brown,

0:38:320:38:36

to come over to Russia to work for her.

0:38:360:38:38

She even shelled out a small fortune for a set of drawings

0:38:380:38:42

of the gardens at Hampton Court Palace,

0:38:420:38:45

under what was actually the mistaken impression

0:38:450:38:48

that Capability Brown had designed them himself.

0:38:480:38:51

But this was one of her failures.

0:38:510:38:54

Capability Brown said, "Niet!" to Catherine the Great.

0:38:540:38:58

He wasn't going to come to Russia.

0:38:580:39:00

Catherine gave her young lover Platon Zubov apartments adjacent to her own.

0:39:010:39:06

Her grandsons came here to play.

0:39:070:39:10

Their father, the Grand Duke Paul, was a less frequent visitor.

0:39:120:39:17

Like Peter the Great, Catherine had a troubled relationship

0:39:180:39:21

with her own son.

0:39:210:39:23

Paul's obsession with military ritual

0:39:230:39:27

and his lack of interest in culture and ideas

0:39:270:39:30

meant that he took after his father,

0:39:300:39:33

whom Catherine had of course usurped.

0:39:330:39:35

She found her eldest grandson Alexander

0:39:370:39:40

much more of a kindred spirit.

0:39:400:39:42

The classical annexe and its gardens

0:39:460:39:48

offered a consoling ideal of order and rationality.

0:39:480:39:53

But in Europe,

0:39:540:39:56

the Enlightenment dream was turning into a darker reality.

0:39:560:40:00

Catherine was horrified by the execution of Louis XVI in 1793...

0:40:010:40:07

..following the French Revolution.

0:40:080:40:10

To begin with, there's a sense

0:40:110:40:14

that the seriousness of the French Revolution didn't dawn on Catherine.

0:40:140:40:19

It seems she had never imagined that this could be the outcome

0:40:190:40:22

of what she'd read in her youth.

0:40:220:40:24

In a way, it was that split in her

0:40:240:40:26

between what she liked intellectually

0:40:260:40:29

and what she saw as possible for a ruler,

0:40:290:40:31

and the idea that Voltaire and his free thinking had led to this,

0:40:310:40:38

to the collapse of a monarchy, was utterly horrifying.

0:40:380:40:42

Even in her old age, Catherine worked indefatigably.

0:40:470:40:52

She rose at seven in the morning, she drank strong coffee,

0:40:520:40:56

and then she wrote in her office till nine.

0:40:560:40:59

She spent the morning listening to reports,

0:40:590:41:02

the afternoon reading and going through her correspondence.

0:41:020:41:06

For all her palace building and patronage of the arts,

0:41:060:41:10

for all the diplomatic and military successes of her reign,

0:41:100:41:14

it was in her commitment to the quiet, steady,

0:41:140:41:17

backroom work of government

0:41:170:41:19

that Catherine was perhaps at her greatest.

0:41:190:41:23

A portrait of the empress with one of her beloved greyhounds,

0:41:260:41:30

painted towards the end of her life, shows them out for a stroll.

0:41:300:41:35

As she walked her dog in this park,

0:41:450:41:47

Catherine could have looked back on a life of extraordinary achievements

0:41:470:41:51

and there were tangible reminders of them in the monuments all about her.

0:41:510:41:56

But poignantly, she had little faith in the future.

0:42:100:42:14

Particularly under her son and successor, Paul.

0:42:140:42:18

"My labour and care and warm concern for the good of the empire

0:42:180:42:23

"will be in vain," she once wrote,

0:42:230:42:26

"because my son hasn't inherited my frame of mind."

0:42:260:42:31

On the 5th of November 1796, Catherine suffered a stroke.

0:42:340:42:39

Hours later, she'd died.

0:42:410:42:43

She was 67.

0:42:440:42:45

That very morning, she'd risen early as usual and gone through her papers,

0:42:470:42:52

working for the Russian Empire to the very end.

0:42:520:42:56

But now, the throne went to her embittered son, Paul.

0:42:570:43:01

The day he was crowned, he changed the law,

0:43:020:43:05

so that no woman would ever sit on the Russian throne again.

0:43:050:43:09

Catherine's suspicion of Paul

0:43:110:43:13

and preference for his son Alexander looked to be well founded.

0:43:130:43:18

Catherine could have disinherited Paul,

0:43:190:43:22

but there were two problems with that.

0:43:220:43:24

One is that any suggestion of doing that

0:43:240:43:27

could have given rise to some sort of conspiracy,

0:43:270:43:30

even a coup against herself.

0:43:300:43:32

She of course had come to the throne by virtue of a coup.

0:43:320:43:35

She was very sensitive to the fact that monarchs could be replaced

0:43:350:43:40

by this method. That was one danger, I think, that she faced.

0:43:400:43:44

The other one was, that if you're going to have a conspiracy,

0:43:440:43:47

you've got to have a conspirator.

0:43:470:43:49

And Alexander didn't show any willingness whatsoever,

0:43:490:43:52

as far as one can tell, to take on that mantle

0:43:520:43:55

and to take his father's place as Catherine's heir.

0:43:550:43:59

As well as undermining his mother's legacy,

0:44:010:44:04

Paul soon alienated the court

0:44:040:44:07

by his fixation with religious and military ritual.

0:44:070:44:11

Concerns also grew among the powerful Guards regiments

0:44:120:44:16

about Paul's erratic foreign policy.

0:44:160:44:18

While Catherine had commanded widespread affection,

0:44:180:44:21

Emperor Paul knew full well that he was loathed,

0:44:210:44:25

just as his father, Peter III, had been.

0:44:250:44:28

And he knew how that had turned out.

0:44:280:44:31

In the centre of St Petersburg,

0:44:390:44:42

the increasingly paranoid Paul built the forbidding St Michael's Castle.

0:44:420:44:47

It was surrounded by a moat and armed with cannons.

0:44:490:44:52

Here, Paul could lock himself in every night,

0:44:530:44:56

with his sons, Alexander and Constantine.

0:44:560:44:59

But when the end came,

0:44:590:45:00

all his attempts at security counted for nothing.

0:45:000:45:04

One night in March 1801,

0:45:060:45:08

conspirators forced their way into the royal bed chamber

0:45:080:45:12

and a grim farce followed.

0:45:120:45:14

Emperor Paul tried to hide behind a fire screen,

0:45:140:45:18

but he left his feet sticking out and they got spotted.

0:45:180:45:21

The conspirators tried to arrest him and then a fight broke out.

0:45:210:45:25

The emperor got bashed over the head with a lethal weapon.

0:45:250:45:29

It was a snuff box.

0:45:290:45:31

A few moments later, he was dead.

0:45:310:45:33

So the conspirators went to wake up Paul's son, Alexander,

0:45:330:45:36

a few bedrooms away.

0:45:360:45:38

Alexander was horrified about what had happened,

0:45:380:45:42

so the conspirators said to him,

0:45:420:45:44

"Man up, Alexander! Stop whimpering!

0:45:440:45:47

"It's time for you to rule!"

0:45:470:45:49

Catherine had seen her grandson as her true heir,

0:45:490:45:53

a future Russian Alexander the Great.

0:45:530:45:56

Alexander had the typical male Romanov love

0:45:570:46:01

of uniforms and military etiquette.

0:46:010:46:04

But he shared Catherine's reforming instincts,

0:46:040:46:06

although he did lack her independence of mind.

0:46:060:46:10

Alexander came to the throne

0:46:120:46:14

at a time when Napoleon Bonaparte was upending Europe.

0:46:140:46:18

Russia joined Austria and Britain in a coalition against Napoleon

0:46:180:46:23

and Alexander soon faced him on the battlefield.

0:46:230:46:28

Napoleon was a military man who fancied himself as an emperor,

0:46:310:46:35

but Alexander was an emperor who fancied himself as a military man.

0:46:350:46:39

But it all went wrong for Alexander in 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz.

0:46:390:46:45

he'd taken command of the army himself,

0:46:450:46:47

but he'd asked them to attack prematurely.

0:46:470:46:50

It was disastrous.

0:46:500:46:52

Many of the Russians and their allies, the Austrians, were killed.

0:47:010:47:05

Alexander realised that this had been his own fault.

0:47:050:47:09

He was so upset about it that he burst into tears

0:47:090:47:12

and he had to be sedated with opium.

0:47:120:47:15

He also had to make peace with Napoleon.

0:47:150:47:18

Alexander was summoned to Tilsit in Prussia.

0:47:210:47:24

Napoleon had two major demands.

0:47:260:47:29

Russia was to join the economic blockade of Britain,

0:47:290:47:32

the so-called Continental System.

0:47:320:47:35

And France was to get control of Russia's neighbour, Poland.

0:47:350:47:39

The two emperors signed their peace treaty

0:47:400:47:43

on a barge in the middle of a river.

0:47:430:47:46

A wobbly setting for a wobbly deal.

0:47:460:47:49

On the surface, the Treaty of Tilsit was the meeting of two equals.

0:47:500:47:54

The reality was, though, that these were not equals.

0:47:540:47:57

Napoleon was the boss.

0:47:570:47:58

Why did Tilsit break down?

0:48:000:48:02

Well, it broke down because that sort of imbalance

0:48:020:48:05

always has to be an unstable treaty.

0:48:050:48:07

In economic terms, it proved almost impossible for Russia

0:48:070:48:10

to continue to be a member of the Continental System,

0:48:100:48:13

but much more important than that, it was quite intolerable

0:48:130:48:16

for Alexander and for Russia for Napoleon to control Poland.

0:48:160:48:19

That was never going to be acceptable.

0:48:190:48:21

Behind Napoleon's back,

0:48:230:48:25

Alexander resumed trade with France's great enemy, Britain.

0:48:250:48:29

By 1812, Napoleon had had enough.

0:48:290:48:33

He decided that he could bend Alexander to his will

0:48:330:48:37

by invading Russia.

0:48:370:48:39

Or so he thought.

0:48:390:48:40

Napoleon was now facing an Alexander who was older and wiser.

0:48:400:48:45

Alexander wasn't going to make the same mistake

0:48:450:48:48

as at Austerlitz in 1805.

0:48:480:48:50

This time, he left the command of his army to the professionals.

0:48:500:48:54

Rather than meet Napoleon's mighty army head on,

0:48:590:49:02

the Russian commanders drew the French deeper and deeper

0:49:020:49:06

inside the country, stretching their supply lines.

0:49:060:49:09

Meanwhile, from the safety of St Petersburg,

0:49:140:49:17

Alexander tried to govern his empire and rally his people.

0:49:170:49:21

On September 7th, 1812, the Russians, under General Kutuzov,

0:49:230:49:28

finally confronted Napoleon at Borodino, near Moscow.

0:49:280:49:33

For Napoleon, it was now or never.

0:49:360:49:39

His forces and resources were at their limit.

0:49:390:49:43

Borodino was a huge battle, involving a quarter of a million troops.

0:49:450:49:51

And it was commemorated in this huge panoramic painting

0:49:510:49:55

by the artist Franz Roubaud.

0:49:550:49:57

115 metres long, it's housed in a purpose-built museum in Moscow.

0:49:580:50:04

And what tricks has it used to bring it alive, as a painter?

0:50:050:50:10

Well, for example, do you see

0:50:100:50:12

-the Russian cavalry, which are attacking the French positions?

-Yes.

0:50:120:50:16

The troopers' heads are much more numerous than the heads of horses.

0:50:160:50:19

So he's made it look like a mass,

0:50:210:50:22

by doing lots and lots of heads and not so many bodies.

0:50:220:50:25

Well, it was most important for the painter

0:50:250:50:27

-to give the impression of cavalry in attack.

-Yes.

0:50:270:50:30

Which was furious and very quick and very exciting.

0:50:300:50:33

So are we right at the front line here?

0:50:450:50:47

These are the Russians coming up to meet the French?

0:50:470:50:50

Yes, and they are starting

0:50:500:50:52

a counter-attack against the French troops.

0:50:520:50:55

Also a column of French infantry is attacking the Russian position.

0:50:590:51:03

Also, French cannons are firing at the Russian position.

0:51:070:51:10

Hang on, haven't we missed out Napoleon?

0:51:230:51:26

-Well, Napoleon...

-Where is he?

-Well, you've missed Napoleon already.

0:51:260:51:30

Is that Napoleon on the white horse?

0:51:300:51:32

Yes, this is Napoleon and these are some of his bodyguards.

0:51:320:51:35

Now, this is said to have been

0:51:350:51:38

the most deadly single day of fighting in history.

0:51:380:51:42

It probably was.

0:51:420:51:43

In what league of casualties are we talking?

0:51:430:51:47

Both sides lost about 20,000 troops.

0:51:470:51:50

Many more were wounded and many more died after the battle.

0:51:500:51:54

Did anybody on the day actually know who had won?

0:51:540:51:58

Well, Napoleon claimed that he won the battle

0:51:580:52:01

and Kutuzov also said that he defeated Napoleon himself.

0:52:010:52:04

Leo Tolstoy said that the Russian side scored a moral victory

0:52:040:52:09

because the Russian army are many soldiers which were inexperienced,

0:52:090:52:13

fought on equal terms with a very strong army,

0:52:130:52:16

which was made up of best European troops.

0:52:160:52:18

Before the battle, Russian troops were preparing for death.

0:52:180:52:21

They didn't want to give up Moscow.

0:52:240:52:26

-So it was a victory for the French, really?

-Not exactly.

0:52:290:52:32

If you were French, would you still tell me

0:52:320:52:34

-that this wasn't a victory for Napoleon?

-Perhaps not.

0:52:340:52:37

What mattered was that Napoleon had failed to destroy

0:52:430:52:46

the Russian forces at Borodino.

0:52:460:52:49

He realised that this was an unwinnable campaign.

0:52:500:52:54

But he found a consolation prize near to hand.

0:52:560:52:59

The Russians were too weakened to defend Moscow.

0:53:040:53:07

The city was left wide open for Napoleon to take.

0:53:070:53:11

This should have been a terrific moment for Napoleon.

0:53:120:53:16

After all, St Petersburg may have been the country's official capital,

0:53:160:53:20

but Moscow was still its spiritual heart.

0:53:200:53:22

Tsars were still crowned in the Kremlin just there.

0:53:220:53:26

But the Russians weren't going to give Napoleon

0:53:260:53:29

the satisfaction of officially surrendering their city to him.

0:53:290:53:33

Instead, the just abandoned it, leaving it barely governable.

0:53:330:53:37

Looting quickly broke out,

0:53:400:53:42

and far more deadly - fire.

0:53:420:53:44

Whether they were caused by accident or arson,

0:53:480:53:52

the flames devastated a city still largely built of wood.

0:53:520:53:56

More than three-quarters of Moscow was destroyed.

0:53:580:54:01

For Alexander, the struggle against Napoleon

0:54:030:54:06

now took on divine proportions.

0:54:060:54:09

He declared that the salvation of his own soul rested on

0:54:130:54:17

whether he could save Europe from ruin.

0:54:170:54:21

At ten o'clock on the morning of March 31st, 1814,

0:54:290:54:34

nearly a year and a half after the burning of Moscow,

0:54:340:54:37

Paris resounded to the arrival of a victorious army.

0:54:370:54:41

But it wasn't the French returning home in triumph.

0:54:440:54:47

It was the forces allied against them,

0:54:470:54:50

and at their head was Alexander.

0:54:500:54:53

No foreign conqueror had reached Paris

0:54:550:54:58

since Henry V of England 400 years before.

0:54:580:55:02

But Alexander was magnanimous.

0:55:020:55:05

He presented himself more as a liberator than a conqueror.

0:55:050:55:09

He even rode on a horse that the French themselves had given him

0:55:090:55:12

five years before.

0:55:120:55:14

And he promised them that they needn't worry about Paris.

0:55:140:55:17

Unlike Moscow, their city would be safe.

0:55:170:55:20

And on the very same day, he made a public declaration

0:55:200:55:24

that the allies would recognise and guarantee a new French constitution.

0:55:240:55:31

And while Parisians witnessed the exotic sight

0:55:330:55:36

of Cossacks setting up camp on the Champs-Elysees,

0:55:360:55:39

Alexander's great adversary, Napoleon, was packed off into exile.

0:55:390:55:44

So, how had it all gone so wrong so quickly for Napoleon

0:55:460:55:51

and so right for Alexander?

0:55:510:55:53

Well, after the destruction of Moscow,

0:55:550:55:57

Napoleon had ordered his grand army to withdraw from Russia,

0:55:570:56:01

but on the way back, they got caught in a ferocious winter

0:56:010:56:06

that devastated their ranks.

0:56:060:56:08

Then, for more than a year, Russia and its allies

0:56:080:56:12

had pursued Napoleon's weakened forces across Europe.

0:56:120:56:15

Now, Paris was theirs.

0:56:160:56:19

How Alexander must have savoured this moment.

0:56:200:56:24

It was as glorious a moment as any Romanov had achieved

0:56:250:56:29

in the history of the dynasty.

0:56:290:56:31

Earlier Russian monarchs, like his grandmother,

0:56:310:56:34

Catherine the Great, had aspired to French sophistication.

0:56:340:56:39

But now, Alexander had the chance to show the French

0:56:390:56:43

how things were done properly,

0:56:430:56:45

how a truly civilised nation behaved in victory.

0:56:450:56:50

Russian troops remained in Paris for several months.

0:56:590:57:03

There's even a story that the very Parisian idea of a bistro

0:57:030:57:07

dates back to 1814.

0:57:070:57:09

The word in Russian means "quickly".

0:57:090:57:12

And this cafe claims to be the first to take its name

0:57:140:57:17

from hungry Russians shouting, "Food! Bistro!"

0:57:170:57:20

But there was the whiff of something dangerous among the Russian troops.

0:57:220:57:25

Especially some of the officers.

0:57:260:57:28

The campaign in Europe had exposed the Russian officers to countries

0:57:290:57:33

that didn't have the pernicious practice of serfdom,

0:57:330:57:37

countries where the ruler didn't have unlimited powers.

0:57:370:57:40

This was very exciting.

0:57:400:57:42

You can imagine them sitting in Parisian cafes

0:57:420:57:45

and saying to each other, "How come Tsar Alexander is going to let

0:57:450:57:50

"the French have a new constitution, but he won't let us have one at all?"

0:57:500:57:55

This meant that when they got home,

0:57:550:57:57

some of them would be ready to call for unprecedented change.

0:57:570:58:02

And quickly. Bistro! Bistro!

0:58:020:58:05

Next time, the story of the Romanovs reaches its tragic endgame.

0:58:080:58:13

As the tsars struggle to hold on to power,

0:58:150:58:18

during the final century of the dynasty,

0:58:180:58:21

they embrace reform, repression,

0:58:210:58:25

and...

0:58:250:58:26

Rasputin.

0:58:260:58:27

And face their deadliest challenge -

0:58:270:58:30

revolution.

0:58:300:58:32

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