CATHERINE I. (1683-1727), empress of Russia, was the daughter of a Lithuanian peasant named Skavronsky, who died when she was a child. Martha Skavronskaya became a servant in the home of Pastor Gluck, the Protestant superintendent of the Marienburg district, and married a Swedish dragoon called Johan. When the Swedes evacuated Marienburg, Martha became one of the prisoners of war of Marshal Sheremetev, who sold her to Prince Menshikov, at whose house, Peter the Great became her lover. After the birth of their first daughter Catherine, Martha was received into the Orthodox Church, when she was rechrist ened under the name of Catherine Alexeyevna, the tsarevich Alexius being her godfather. She received the title Gosudaruinya or sovereign (I 71O), and Peter, who had divorced the tsaritsa Eu doxia, married her in 171i. Henceforth the new tsaritsa was her husband's inseparable companion. She was with him during the campaign of the Pruth, and Peter always attributed the success f ul issue of that disastrous war to her courage and sang-f roid. She was with him, too, during his earlier Caspian campaigns. He was devoted to her, and she was able to act as a buffer between the tsar and his advisers in his frequent accesses of rage.
By the ukaz of 1722 Catherine was proclaimed Peter's suc cessor, to the exclusion of the grand-duke Peter, the only son of the tsarevich Alexius, and on May 7, 1724, was solemnly crowned empress-consort in the Uspensky cathedral at Moscow, on which occasion she wore a crown studded with no fewer than 2,564 precious stones, surmounted by a ruby, as large as a pigeon's egg, supporting a cross of brilliants. Within a few months of her coronation a dangerously familiar flirtation with her gen tleman of the chamber, William Mons, caused some scandal. Mons was decapitated and his severed head, preserved in spirits, was placed in the apartments of the empress, but she attended Peter during his last illness, and closed his eyes when he died (Jan. 28, 1725). She was at once raised to the throne by the party of Prince Menshikov and Count Tolstoy with the support of the Guards.
The great administrative innovation of Catherine's reign was the establishment of the Verkhovny Tainy Sovyet, or supreme privy council. The executive power was thus concentrated in the hands of a few persons, mainly of the party of Reform (ukaz of Feb. 26, 1726). The foreign policy of Catherine I. was princi pally directed by the astute Andrei Ostermann. Russia now found herself opposed to England, chiefly because Catherine protected Charles Frederick, duke of Holstein, and George I. found that the Schleswig-Holstein question might be reopened to the detri ment of his Hanoverian possessions. In the spring of 1726, an English squadron was sent to the Baltic and cast anchor before Reval. The empress protested, and the fleet was withdrawn, but on Aug. 6 Catherine acceded to the anti-English Austro-Spanish league. Catherine died on May 16, 1727. Though quite illit erate, she was an uncommonly shrewd, sensible and good-tempered woman. Her personal extravagance was a byword.