The Family of John III – Imprisonment in Dinamünde

Eventually, the suspicious Empress decided to transfer her high-ranking prisoners to a more secure location than the overly exposed port city of Riga. On December 13, 1742, she signed a decree to imprison Anna Leopoldovna and her family in the old Swedish fortress of Dinamünde (later Ust-Dvinsk, now Daugavgrīva, located within the city limits of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava River). In the same decree, the Empress, in a very lady-like manner, once again demanded to find out from her rival where the fan "with red stones" — a gift from Biron to Anna Ioannovna — could have gone. "…and if she tries to excuse herself by saying she does not know, we cannot believe that," declared the Empress. "For until now, the truth about it has been unknown and unasked; but now we have received true information from the former Duke of Courland that this fan was given by him as a gift to the late Empress Anna Ioannovna on her name day." — "…And I did not take it for myself nor gave it to anyone, which I can fearlessly swear," Anna Leopoldovna habitually retorted to the accusations.

On December 19, 1742, he arrived in Riga. On January 2, 1743, the prisoners and their guards moved to a new place of confinement. The fortress ("Dinamündschanz") resembled the Peter and Paul or Shlisselburg fortresses, was surrounded by water, and was quite suitable for isolating dangerous detainees. From there, Anton Ulrich could no longer send messages to the outside world. The conditions of detention were tightened, and hopes for a possible departure collapsed. "Since my arrival at Dinamündschanz, the sea gates have been locked tight, and I always have the keys to those gates. Only the Riga gate remains open for passage, and besides the garrison guard, the guards stand at those gates," reported Saltykov. The Empress's decree categorically forbade anyone from approaching the prisoners or delivering letters and other items "under the pretext that something like food or anything else was sent to Julia from her mother."

In the commandant's house at Dinamünde, the prisoners spent another difficult year. There were no disturbances like those in Riga, and Saltykov's reports consistently stated: "…my team is well." Just in case, chamberlain Karl Sivers arrived in August to visit his "team." On January 1, 1744, the princess gave birth to a girl named Elizabeth. According to Saltykov's report, the "priest of the Dinamündschanz fortress was summoned, who baptized [the child] in the presence of Lieutenant Sukin on the same day; and the godparents were the princess's chaplain and Julia." The prisoners spent more than a year in Dinamünde, in the commandant's house.

There, on January 1, 1744, the princess gave birth to a girl, Princess Elizabeth. Before that, according to Saltykov's report, on the night of October 15, 1742, Anna had a miscarriage, described by doctors Emzele and Graf as "about three months, male fetus." And as soon as Anna Leopoldovna was able to move, the family and servants were taken from Dinamünde to an unknown location. The Empress's decision, who closely followed the fate of the Brunswick family, to send the prisoners far from the borders, deep into the empire, was most likely the result of the loud Lopukhin affair, which began and ended in the summer of 1743. It involved not just a chamberlain or ensign but people of high society: court lady of Elizabeth Natalya Lopukhina, her husband General Stepan Lopukhin, their son Ivan, close friend Anna Bestuzheva, court lady Sofia Lilienfeld, and others. Although the case materials show that there was no conspiracy to overthrow Elizabeth, the investigators, under the direct control of the Empress, "stitched" a case about a conspiracy in favor of Ivan Antonovich and the regent, about whom they spoke quite sympathetically in Lopukhina's salon. The case was based on a denunciation against Lopukhina's son, Ivan, from his comrade Lieutenant Ivan Berger of the Kirasir regiment. Sometime in early July 1743, Lopukhin, sitting with Berger in a tavern — more precisely, in the so-called "free house" of a certain Berlar — a place of entertainment for guard officers, confided: he began complaining about life, resenting that he was "excluded" from the chamberlains and transferred to the army with the rank of only lieutenant colonel, and that the village previously given to his mother had been taken away. Moreover, Ivan Lopukhin claimed that Elizabeth Petrovna was not a true sovereign and behaved like a commoner — running around everywhere, drinking beer. It was said about her that after the death of Peter II in 1730, the authorities wanted to put her on the throne, but suddenly it turned out that she was pregnant by an unknown man! Then Lopukhin began praising the times of the regent Anna Leopoldovna — a merciful, gentle, quiet sovereign! And the current sovereign Elizabeth, he said, "our nobility generally does not like," nor does the army. It is known that Elizabeth placed Anna Leopoldovna under strict guard in Riga, but she does not know that the Riga guard is "very inclined" towards her and the former emperor Ivan. Soon, other times will come — the regent will return, and Austria will help us, the Austrian envoy Botta is working on this, he often visits the Lopukhin household.

Berger listened to all this and reported Ivan Lopukhin. He was arrested, interrogated, tortured; Ivan implicated his mother, father, and others. It was known that the Empress disliked the proud Natalya Lopukhina, who dressed elegantly and behaved independently. It is no coincidence that the Lopukhina case bears a clear imprint of the Empress's personal revenge. From the surviving case materials, it is evident that Natalya Fyodorovna was indeed a strong-willed and proud woman. At first, she behaved with dignity, denied the conspiracy charges, did not ask for forgiveness, and defended her husband: she claimed that when the envoy Botta visited her, she spoke German mostly about the weather, and her husband did not know the language. Later, when pressured, she admitted that she had a sympathetic conversation with Marquis de Botta about Ivan Antonovich and Anna Leopoldovna, although no word about a conspiracy in their favor was said.

The presence of the Austrian envoy de Botta in the case particularly alarmed Elizabeth — it was known that Austria was always allied with the regent, who was related to the imperial family from Vienna. Elizabeth firmly believed in the existence of "conspiracy threads" extending abroad — after all, she herself had come to power recently, in 1741, with the support and money of the Swedish and French envoys. The Lopukhin case, in Elizabeth's and her circle's opinion, testified to the existence of the "Brunswick family party," consisting of hidden and open supporters of restoring the regent's regime. Although this "party" existed only on paper, written by the investigators of the Secret Chancellery, the Empress saw in it a direct threat to herself and tightened the detention regime for the Brunswick family. Border towns Riga and Dinamünde no longer seemed reliable prisons to her. As already mentioned, the Lopukhin case revealed information that particularly worried Elizabeth: that among the prisoners' guards there were allegedly hidden supporters. To expose the guards' connections with St. Petersburg, officer Kamynin, who served under Saltykov and wrote something incomprehensible in a letter intercepted by the authorities about his "bad life" in Riga, was arrested. Although suspicions were not confirmed, Elizabeth decided to solve the problem decisively — on January 9, 1744, Saltykov received an order to urgently send his wards far from the border — to the center of Russia, to the town of Ranenburg in the Voronezh province. According to many researchers, this advice came to St. Petersburg… from Berlin, from King Frederick II, who, through the Russian envoy Chernyshov, passed on to Elizabeth: send the Brunswick family "to such places that no one could know where they are, and so that all of Europe would forget about them." He was convinced that no sovereign would stand up for them. It is unknown why the Prussian king, who was already not known as a friend of Russia, needed this. Perhaps he wanted to improve relations with the Russian Empress, who did not like him, a gay man and disturber of European peace; perhaps he gave this advice without much thought, just out of spite or for amusement. He had done so many times in his life, spoiling relations with people and even entire states.

The decree of January 9, 1744, instructed Saltykov to transport the former regent with her family at night, without stopping in Riga, but "across the lakes on the Pskov road." However, the departure had to be postponed: the chief doctor Mikhail Manze declared that "the princess, due to her recent childbirth and not yet fully ended painful attacks, is not able to set out on the road but must wait another 10 to 14 days." The Empress agreed, and the prison "train" left Dinamünde on January 31.

Sources:

Igor Vladimirovich Kurukin: Anna Leopoldovna

Evgeny Viktorovich Anisimov: Secrets of the Forbidden Emperor