At any rate it is clear that when Peter first met her in the bloom of her youth she was graceful in person and pleasing in manner. She likewise was amply endowed with common sense and a remarkably sweet temper. She managed to make herself the complete master of the colossal bear to whom she was married. She alone could quiet the Czar in those violent frenzies of passion to which he was subject and in the presence of which all others quailed.
Her devotion to Peter was boundless. She accompanied him everywhere, even on his campaigns, and was ever present in his camps and even on the field of battle. Her courage was never shaken, and in the hour of Russia's greatest reverses she did not falter, so that at times her hopeful courage perhaps saved the Czar and the empire from ruin.
Some nineteen years after Peter's return from his first journeyings, he again set out on a tour through the other countries of Europe, and he took his wife with him. He never seems to have been ashamed of her, but he would not take her to the Court of France, not wishing, it is believed, to subject her to the ridicule and criticisms of the most frivolous capitol in Europe. He therefore left her in Holland when he went to Paris.
The Czar went everywhere in his insatiable thirst for knowledge, speaking as he did all the languages of Europe, and was received at the various courts in a manner befitting his station, for it is said of him that, uncouth savage as he was, he could at times assume the bearing of a polished courtier. He was not ignorant of the rules of etiquette, but usually refused to be handled by the modes of polite society.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
