The reign of this woman was marked by a bloodthirsty, revengeful, selfish, unscrupulously ambitious and tyrannical administration. Stimulated by vanity to the commencement of great undertakings, few of which she ever finished, she was given to a constant intermeddling in the affairs of foreign courts, and in the adoption of customs and maxims of government unknown before her time. During her whole reign she was engaged in wars, mostly of aggression, and was never known to hold a treaty sacred when interest demanded that it should be broken. Her sins against the acknowledged laws of the nation were numerous and appalling.
Historians have united, however, in settling upon the arbitrary partition of Poland as the stupendous crime of her reign. She carried out her policy toward this unhappy kingdom with a persistency and inhumanity far more revolting than that of her allies, Prussia and Austria, and she bore the burden of the lion's share of the outrage which she perpetrated upon the Polish people.
She also took large territories from Turkey and developed a plan for the expulsion of the Mohammedans from Europe. She plotted to set up in the European realms of the Sultan a new government, upon which she proposed to place in authority one of her lovers. She was active in pushing so-called reforms, when they could redound to her own glory, but she seems to have cared nothing for the real good of her people.
She had lovers galore, upon whom in turn she lavished the moneys of the national treasury, yet never had anything with which to relieve the wants of her oppressed and starving people. The details of her private life are too shocking for these pages.
She is said to have possessed beauty of a certain masculine sort and was rather above the medium height, her carriage being majestic.
Though an atheist at heart she was outwardly devout. She made great literary pretensions and, among her works, she wrote a history of her times, but her knowledge was so superficial and her writings of so little merit that they have not been considered worthy of preservation.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
