Ivan Antonovich died, but the family’s misfortunes continued:
“The famous commission in Kholmogory” — as the prisoners of the archbishop’s house were called in official documents — continued to “work.” The family of Prince Anton-Ulrich (he himself, two daughters, and two sons) still lived there. The house stood on the bank of the Dvina River, which was slightly visible from one window, and was surrounded by a high fence enclosing a large yard with a pond, a vegetable garden, a bathhouse, and a carriage shed. For three decades, carriages and carts stood motionless there, the very ones that once brought Anna Leopoldovna and her family. To a fresh observer, the prisoners lived in cramped, dirty rooms filled with dilapidated, shabby furniture, with smoking, crumbling stoves. When in 1765 the Arkhangelsk governor Golovtsyn visited them, the prisoners complained that their bathhouse had completely fallen apart and they had not washed for three years. They lacked everything — new clothes, linen, buckles for shoes. The men lived in one room, the women in another, and “from room to room — only doors, the chambers were old, small, and cramped.” Other rooms in the house and buildings in the yard were filled with soldiers, the numerous servants of the prince and his children.
Living together for years, decades, under one roof (the guard did not change for twelve years), these people quarreled, reconciled, fell in love, and informed on each other. Scandals followed one after another: Anton-Ulrich quarreled with Bina (Jakobina Mengden — sister of Julia, who, unlike the latter, was allowed to go to Kholmogory), then a soldier was caught stealing, and officers were caught having affairs with the nurses. The commandant and his subordinates drank shamelessly and ruthlessly robbed Anton-Ulrich and his relatives, and the perpetually drunk cook prepared some inedible mess for them. Over the years, the guards forgot discipline and walked around disheveled. Gradually, together with Anton-Ulrich, they became decrepit old men, each with his own quirks.
Occasionally, the prince wrote letters to Empress Elizabeth: thanking her for the bottles of Hungarian wine sent or some other alms and parcels. He especially suffered without coffee, which he needed daily. In his letters to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, then Peter III, and Catherine II, he showed marked, even servile loyalty, calling himself a “kneeling wretch,” “insignificant dust and ashes,” “unhappy worm,” addressing the royal person with “humble and miserable lines” of request. He never once asked for release, probably understanding that it was unrealistic. In the autumn of 1761, Anton-Ulrich wrote a letter to Empress Elizabeth, asking her “to allow my children to learn to read and write so that they themselves could kneelingly address Your Imperial Majesty and together with me pray to God for the health and well-being of Your Majesty and your family until the end of our lives.” The Empress, as always, remained silent in response. After Catherine II ascended the throne, Anton-Ulrich addressed her with the same humble request. The new sovereign kindly replied to the prince’s letter in August 1762, expressing sympathy but did not promise release, diplomatically writing: “Your liberation is connected with certain difficulties, which your prudence may understand.” She did not promise to help educate the princes and princesses either. Soon Catherine II sent General Bibikov to Kholmogory, tasked with compiling a report on the situation in the prison and giving characterizations of its inhabitants. On behalf of the Empress, Bibikov offered the prince to leave Russia and return to Germany. But he refused the gracious offer of the sovereign. The Danish diplomat wrote that the prince, “accustomed to his captivity, sick and downhearted, refused the freedom offered to him.” This is inaccurate — the prince did not want freedom for himself alone; he wanted to leave with his children. But these conditions no longer suited Catherine. The instructions to Bibikov stated that “we now intend to free him and send him to his homeland with decency,” but his children, for the same state reasons which he can understand by his prudence, cannot be freed until our state affairs stabilize in the order in which they have now taken a new position for the welfare of our empire.” From this text, the reasons for the sovereign’s mercy and simultaneously cruelty are clear. Prince Anton-Ulrich posed no threat to her power, unlike his children, especially the princes. Until the Empress consolidated her power, they formally — by virtue of the will of Empress Anna Ioannovna — remained claimants to the throne, following their elder brother Ivan in the dynastic order. The Empress never gave permission for the princes and princesses to be educated (this was not in the sovereign’s plans and, moreover, meant that teachers would have to be sent to Kholmogory); they were literate. In 1773, Princess Elizabeth personally wrote three letters to the Empress in good style and handwriting, though with mistakes, begging the sovereign to give them “at least a little release from captivity (so!), in which we are kept born besides our father.” Alarm was raised: it turned out that the prince’s children, despite the absence of teachers, were literate. It was revealed that the father taught the children to read and write using the old alphabet left to them by their deceased mother, as well as her sacred books, which the children read.
Apparently, the appearance of Bibikov, a humane and kind man, as well as the extraordinarily kind letters from the new sovereign, aroused some vague hopes in the Brunswick family, if not for freedom, then at least for easing the prison regime. Therefore, in September 1763, the prince dared to ask the Empress for “a little more freedom”: to allow the children to attend services in the church standing next to the prison. Catherine refused, as she did to his request to give the children “a little more fresh air” (they were kept inside the building most of the year).
Anton-Ulrich never received even a little freedom, a little fresh air, nor did the affairs of Empress Catherine take a favorable turn for him. By the age of sixty, he had become decrepit, began to go blind, and after 34 years of captivity, died on May 4, 1776. On his deathbed, he asked to give his children “at least a little release.” At night, the guards secretly carried his coffin into the yard and buried him there near the church, without a priest, without ceremony, like a suicide, vagrant, or drowned man. Did his children see him off on his last journey? We do not even know this. Most likely, it was not allowed — they were forbidden to leave the house. But it is known that they suffered terribly from their father’s death and were cruelly grieved. In the following year, 1777, the family faced another heavy loss — two old women, the nurses and caretakers of the princes, Anna Ivanova and Anna Ilyina, died one after another. They had long become close family members, dear people.
The princes and princesses lived in captivity for another four years after their father’s death. By 1780, they were already adults: deaf Catherine was 39, Elizabeth was 37, Peter was 35, and Alexei was 34 years old. All were weak, with obvious physical defects, and suffered from frequent and prolonged illnesses. An eyewitness wrote about the eldest son, Peter, that “he was of a sickly and consumptive build, somewhat crooked-shouldered and bow-legged. The younger son Alexei was of a plump and healthy build… but had seizures.” The prince’s daughter Catherine was “of a sickly and almost consumptive build, somewhat deaf, spoke mutely and indistinctly, and was always afflicted with various painful seizures, of a very quiet disposition.”
But despite living in captivity, they all grew up to be intelligent, kind, and likable people. All visitors who came to see the prisoners, following Bibikov, noted that they were greeted kindly, and that the prince’s family was unusually close-knit. As Golovtsyn wrote, “on my first visit, from conversations I could notice that the father loves his children, and the children respect him, and no disagreements are visible between them.” Like Bibikov, Golovtsyn noted the special cleverness of Princess Elizabeth, who, crying, said that “their only fault is being born,” and that she hoped that perhaps the Empress would free them and take them to court [547].
General-Governor Melgunov of the Vologda province, who visited them after Anton-Ulrich’s death, wrote about Princess Catherine Antonovna that despite her deafness, “from her behavior it is clear that she is shy, reserved, polite, and modest, of a quiet and cheerful disposition; seeing others laughing in conversations, although she does not know the reason, she joins them…” Melgunov spoke freely with Princess Elizabeth — she was intelligent and thorough. It seems the dream of freedom did not leave Princess Elizabeth, and she again bitterly told Melgunov about their unfulfilled desire “to live in high society,” to learn social manners. “But in our current situation,” Elizabeth Antonovna continued, “we have nothing more to wish for than to live here in seclusion, in Kholmogory. We are content with everything, we were born here, got used to this place, and have grown old here, so the high society is not only unnecessary but burdensome for us, because we do not know how to behave with people, and it is already too late to learn.”
“As for the brothers,” Melgunov continued his report to the Empress, “both of them, in my observation, seem to have no natural sharpness, but rather show timidity, simplicity, shyness, silence, and manners suitable for small boys. However, the younger of them, Alexei, seems more lively, bolder, and more cautious than his elder brother Peter. But judging by his behavior, he is simple and of a too cheerful disposition, laughing and chuckling when there is nothing funny at all… They live amicably among themselves, and moreover… are not malicious and are humane, and the brothers obey and listen to Elizabeth in everything. Their pastime consists of working in the garden in summer, going after chickens and ducks and feeding them, and in winter they run races on wooden horses on the pond in the garden, read church books, and play cards and checkers; the girls, besides that, sometimes sew linen.”
Elizabeth had several requests that probably turned Alexei Petrovich Melgunov’s sensitive, humane, and kind soul upside down: “We ask to petition Her Imperial Majesty for one mercy, that 1) we be allowed to go out of the house to the meadows for walks, as we have heard there are flowers there that are not in our garden”; second — to allow the wives of the guards’ officers to visit them and befriend them — “otherwise we get bored alone!” The third request: “By the mercy of Her Imperial Majesty, cornets, caps, and toques are sent to us from Petersburg, but we do not use them because neither we nor our girls know how to put them on and wear them. So please do us the favor… send a person who could dress us in them.” The princess also asked to move the bathhouse farther from the house, increase the salary of their servants, and allow them to leave the house. At the end of this conversation with Melgunov, Elizabeth said that if these requests were fulfilled, “we would be very satisfied and would not trouble anyone with anything else and desire nothing more and would be glad to remain in such a state forever.”
Melgunov did not tell the princes and princesses that his visit was not just an inspection trip. The fact is that Catherine nevertheless decided to send the Brunswick family abroad — to do what Elizabeth Petrovna had not done almost forty years earlier. The Empress began correspondence with Danish Queen Juliana Maria, sister of Anton-Ulrich and aunt of the Kholmogory prisoners, and offered to settle them in Norway, then a province of Denmark. The queen replied that she could even accommodate them in Denmark itself. Melgunov was sent to Kholmogory to compile a report on the basis of which the Empress could make a decision. After reading Melgunov’s report, Catherine II ordered preparations for the departure of Anna Leopoldovna’s and Anton-Ulrich’s children. Preparations began. Suddenly, gold, silver, and diamonds sparkled in the modest chambers of the archbishop’s house — gifts from the Empress were being brought and brought: a gigantic silver service, diamond rings for the men and earrings for the women, unprecedented wonderful powders, lipsticks, shoes, dresses.
Seven German and fifty Russian tailors in Yaroslavl hurriedly prepared dresses for the four prisoners. The “golden glazed coats on sable fur” for Princesses Catherine Antonovna and Elizabeth Antonovna alone were worth something! And although the Empress was a pure-blooded German, she acted in a Russian manner — show our own! Let the Danish relatives see how we keep prisoners of royal blood.
Sources:
Igor Vladimirovich Kurukin: Anna Leopoldovna
Evgeny Viktorovich Anisimov: Secrets of the Forbidden Emperor
