The only son of Peter's second marriage having died in childhood, he left only daughters, and it was supposed by many that the crown would settle upon his favorite child, Anna Petrowna, a beautiful and amiable young princess, but however it may be, Peter being dead, Catherine willed otherwise, and with the aid of her favorite, Menzikoff, she seized the throne.
Catherine I reigned only two years and it would have been better for her fame is she had not reigned at all. Menzikoff, her Prime Minister, was of equally ignoble origin with herself. It is said that in his boyhood he was the servant of a pastry cook who sold cakes about the streets of Moscow. However, although ignorant of letters, Peter had invested him with the highest dignities of State, and now it so happened that the affairs of the empire were left in the keeping of two persons who could neither read nor write.
The haughty old nobility could not reconcile its traditional ideas of the throne, and what is ought to be, with the sway of two such lowborn rulers. Menzikoff seems neither to have cared for their scorn nor feared their hatred, but the contempt, ridicule and continual opposition which relentlessly pursued Catherine, sank deep into her soul and broke her heart. She sought solace in dissipation, and the virtues which had distinguished her during Peter's lifetime seem to have deserted her.
Although her humane disposition deterred her from acts of violence and cruelty, she fell into habits of drunkenness which shortened her days, and she died at the age of thirty-eight.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
