Читать книгу The Daughter of an Empress - L. Muhlbach - Страница 9

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Tranquillity was again established in Russia. Once again all faces were lighted up with joy at this new state of affairs, and again the people congratulated themselves on the good fortune of the Russian empire! All this was done four weeks previously, when Biron took upon himself the regency, and the same will be done again when another comes to overthrow the Regent Anna!

It was on the day after this new revolution, when Munnich, entering the palace with a proud step and elevated head, requested an interview with the regent.

“Your highness,” he said, not bending the knee before his sovereign as custom demanded, but only slightly pressing her hand to his lips—“your highness, I have redeemed my word and fulfilled my promise. I promised to liberate you from Biron and make you regent, and I have kept my word. Now, madame, it is for you to fulfil your pledge! You solemnly promised that when I should succeed in making you regent, you would immediately and unconditionally grant me whatever I might demand. Well, now, you are regent, and I come to proffer my request!”

“It will make me happy, field-marshal, to discharge a small part of my obligations toward you, by yielding to your demand. Ask quickly, that I may the sooner give!” said Anna Leopoldowna, with an engaging smile.

“Make me the generalissimo of your forces!” responded Munnich in an almost commanding tone.

A cloud gathered over the smiling features of the regent.

“Why must you ask precisely this—this one only favor which it is no longer in my power to bestow?” she sadly said. “There are so many offices, so many influential positions—ah, I could prove my gratitude to you in so many ways! Ask for money, treasures, landed estates—all these it is in my power to give. Why must you demand precisely that which is no longer mine!”

Munnich stared at her with widely opened eyes, trembling lips, and pallid cheeks. His head swam, and he thought he could not have rightly heard.

“I hope this is only a misunderstanding!” he stammered. “I must have heard wrong; it cannot be your intention to refuse me.”

“Would to God it were yet in my power to gratify you!” sighed the regent. “But I cannot give what is no longer mine! Why came you not a few hours earlier, field-marshal? then it would have been yet possible to comply with your request. But now it is too late!”

“You have, then, appointed another generalissimo?” shrieked Munnich, quivering with rage.

“Yes,” said Anna, smiling; “and see, there comes my generalissimo!”

It was the regent’s husband, Prince Ulrich von Brunswick, who that moment entered the room and calmly greeted Munnich.

“You have here a rival, my husband,” said the princess, without embarrassment; “and had I not already signed your diploma, it is very questionable whether I should now do it, now that I know Count Munich desires the appointment.”

“I hope,” proudly responded the prince, “Count Munnich will comprehend that this position, which places the whole power of the empire in the hands of him who holds it, is suitable only for the father of the emperor!”

Count Munnich made no answer. Already so near the attainment of his end, he saw it again elude his grasp. Again had he labored, struggled, in vain. This was the second revolution which he had brought about, with this his favorite plan in view: two regents were indebted to him for their greatness, and both had refused him the one thing for which he had made them regents; neither had been willing to create him generalissimo!

In this moment Munnich felt unable to conceal his rage under an assumed tranquillity; pretending a sudden attack of illness, he begged permission to retire.

Tottering, scarcely in possession of his senses, he hastened through the hall thronged with petitioners. All bowed before him, all reverently saluted him; but to him it seemed that he could read nothing but mockery and malicious joy upon all those smiling faces. Ah, he could have crushed them all, and trodden them under his feet, in his inextinguishable rage!

When he finally reached his carriage, and his proud steeds were bearing him swiftly away—when none could any longer see him—then he gave vent to furious execrations, and tears of rage flowed from his eyes; he tore out his hair and smote his breast; he felt himself wandering, frantic with rage and despair. One thought, one wish had occupied him for many long years; he had labored and striven for it. He wished to be the first, the most powerful man in the Russian empire; he would control the military force, and in his hands should rest the means of giving the country peace or war! That was what he wanted; that was what he had labored for—and now. …

“Oh, Biron, Biron,” he faintly groaned, “why must I overthrow you? You loved me, and perhaps would one day have accorded me what you at first refused! Biron, I have betrayed you with a kiss. It is your guardian angel who is now avenging you!”

Thus he reached his palace, and the servants who opened the door of his carriage started back with alarm at the fearful expression of their master’s face. It had become of an ashen gray, his blue lips quivered, and his gloomily-gleaming eyes seemed to threaten those who dared approach him.

Alighting in silence, he strode on through the rows of his trembling servants. Suddenly two of his lackeys fell upon their knees before him, weeping and sobbing; they stretched forth their hands to him, begging for mercy.

“What have they done?” asked he of his major-domo.

“Feodor has had the misfortune to break your excellency’s drinking-cup, and Ivanovitch bears the blame of suffering your greyhound Artemisia to escape.”

A strange joy suddenly lighted up the brow of the count.

“Ah,” said he, breathing more freely, and stretching himself up—“ah, I thank God that I now have some one on whom I can wreak my vengeance!”

And kicking the unfortunate weeping and writhing servants, who were crawling in the dust before him, Munnich cried:

“No mercy, you hounds—no, no mercy! You shall be scourged until you have breathed out your miserable lives! The knout here! Strike! I will look on from my windows, and see that my commands are executed! Ah, I will teach you to break my cups and let my hounds escape! Scourge them unto death! I will see their blood—their red, smoking blood!”

The field-marshal stationed himself at his open window. The servants had formed a close circle around the unhappy beings who were receiving their punishment in the court below. The air was filled with the shrieks of the tortured men, blood flowed in streams over their flayed backs, and at every new stroke of the knout they howled and shrieked for mercy; while at every new shriek Munnich cried out to his executioners:

“No, no mercy, no pity! Scourge the culprits! I would, I must see blood! Scourge them to death!”

Trembling, the band of servants looked on with folded hands; with a savage smile upon his face, stood Count Munnich at his window above.

Weaker and weaker grew the cries of the unhappy sufferers—they no longer prayed for mercy. The knout continued to flay their bodies, but their blood no longer flowed—they were dead!

The surrounding servants folded their hands in prayer for the souls of the deceased, and then loudly commended the mild justice of their master!

Retiring from the window, Count Munnich ordered his breakfast to be served!(*)

(*) Such horribly cruel punishments of the serfs were at

that time no uncommon occurrence in Russia. Unhappy serfs

were daily scourged to death at the command of their

masters. Moreover, princes and generals, and even

respectable ladies, were scourged with the knout at the

command of the emperor. Yet these punishments in Russia had

nothing dishonoring in them. The Empress Catharine II. had

three of her court ladies stripped and scourged in the

presence of the whole court, for having drawn some offensive

caricatures of the great empress. One of these scourged

ladies, afterward married to a Russian magnate, was sent by

Catharine as a sort of ambassadress to Sweden, for the

purpose of inducing the King of Sweden to favor some of her

political plans.—“Memoires Secrets sur la Russie, par

Masson,” vol. iii., p. 392.

From that time forward, however, Munnich’s life was a continuous chain of vexations and mortifications. As his inordinate ambition was known, he was constantly suspected, and was reprehended with inexorable severity for every fault.

It is true the regent raised him to the post of first minister; but Ostermann, who recovered his health after the successful termination of the revolutionary enterprise, by various intrigues attained to the position of minister of foreign affairs; while to Golopkin was given the department of the interior, so that only the war department remained to the first minister, Munnich. He had originated and accomplished two revolutions that he might become generalissimo, and had obtained nothing but mortifications and humiliations that embittered every moment of his life!