The one thing that stains the reign of Maria Theresa is the partition of Poland. There is no doubt at all that she entered upon it with great unwillingness and felt that she was forced to talce part lest there should be such a dis turbance of frontiers and the balance of power in central Europe as would leave her kingdom and people open to attack under unfavorable conditions. Perhaps another fault was the as sociation of her son Joseph II in the govern ment. Maria Theresa was a woman of heart and high administrative powers. Her son Joseph was an intellectual prig who was quite sure that humanity could be made better by rules and regulations and that men could be governed by sweet reasonableness and intel lectual reform. His career as a ruler was an utter failure. He tried to make himself a benevolent autocrat for the benefit of his sub jects and was so terribly disappointed by his failure that he died a broken-hearted man be fore he was 50.
Women were destined to play an extremely important role in 18th century history. The reign of Queen Anne is a great period in English history but unfortunately unworthy women were to be the most influential char acters of the time. The most noteworthy of these whose career is typical in many ways of the lamentable political influences that were at work was Catherine II, the empress of Russia, who reigned from 1762 to 1796. She was not a native Russian, but a princess of Anhalt Zerbst in upper Saxony. Her name Sophia Augusta was changed to Catherine on her ad mission into the Greek Church just before her marriage with Peter who had been selected to succeed his aunt, the Empress Elizabeth, on the throne of Russia. She was not the first thus to be lifted from obscurity to the high posi tion of empress of the Russians, for her earliest predecessor in the 18th century, Catherine I, the wife of Peter the Great, who reigned for two years after his death, 1725 to 1727, was the natural daughter of a country girl in Livonia. The first Catherine, after having been the mistress of a series of Russian gen erals, attracted the attention of the tsar and became his mistress and subsequently his wife. She died at the early age of 40, her end being hastened by dissipation. She never learned to read or write, but she knew how to manage men. The second Catherine was quite as dissi pated, and had even more administrative ability, but she had devoted herself to her own educa tion until she came to be looked up to as one of the scholars of the time. She was a friend of Voltaire and of the Encyclopedists. She was a great believer in the new social philos ophy which they preached, and maintained cor respondence with them. Her husband frittered
away his life in senseless dissipation, but while the Empress Elizabeth lived, Catherine main tained some show of respectability and acquired deep influence over her. Her mode of life, however, soon became such as to make the paternity of her children a matter of grave doubt With the death of Elizabeth the half imbecile Peter, her husband, soon got into serious difficulty with his people and his nobles, and Catherine through her lovers took advan tage of this to secure the throne.
All during her life Catherine continued to live most licentiously. One lover succeeded another, though one favorite, Potemkin, main tained his influence over Catherine for some 15 years, supplying her with new favorites when his mistress's personal inclination for himself suffered an interval or ceased entirely. Cath erine's lovers are said to have cost Russia over $100,000,000 at a time and under circumstances when money was worth at least five times as much as it is now. In spite of this utterly de praved personal character Catherine ruled Russia for Russia's advantage though not for the benefit of her subjects. She pursued relent lessly the policy of giving Russia an egress for its commerce by sea. She succeeded m bring ing Courland with its Baltic coast line into the Russian Empire, had Poniatowslci, an old lover, elected to the throne of Poland, and finally brought about the infamous division of Poland — Catherine obtaining about two-thirds of the Polish territory. An insurrection of the people under Kosciusko, the Polish hero of the Ameri can Revolution, failed, the Russian army stormed Warsaw and the last trace of Poland as an independent country was obliterated (1794). It was the foulest deed in history. War with the Turks led to Catherine's conquest of Bessarabia and other countries down to the Caspian and came near realizing the Russian empress' dream of driving the Turks entirely from Europe and the establishment of her own empire at Constantinople. She was com pletely alienated from all sympathy for French ideas by the progress of the French Revolution and prohibited the publication of French worIcs in Russia. French admirers used to call her the Semiramis of the North and her career, political and moral, amply justifies the com parison, with the moral balance in favor of the ancient ruler who anticipated Catherine by some 2,500 years. It was the presence of such rulers as herself and Louis XV during the 18th cen tury that brought about the reaction against monarchical government which was to attract so much attention during the 19th century.