Fama says that hundreds of lovers (including one horse) have passed through her bed. In a secret room of pleasure, she would indulge in the most lascivious acts. At some point, she even began experimenting with mansions, and exhaustion from sexual excesses made it difficult for her to rule the country. But are those who accuse Catherine the Great of nymphomania right?
According to historian Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, she was "promiscuous and" shameless ". Adam Mickiewicz called her "the most complete of women" and compared the Tsarina to ... Venus. The conservative Stanisław Tarnowski spoke even more sharply about the Russian ruler, who wrote:"she was the incarnation of utter godlessness, which the raison d'etat had developed in public affairs, proclaimed the highest principle and law, (...) she had a calm conscience, because she did not have one at all."
Some historians went even further, calling her "the harlot of all time" and ... "the sex alchemist". Well, there is no doubt that Catherine the Great was not immune to the charms of the opposite sex. She liked sex and made no secret of it. But did she actually deserve the label of a nymphomaniac?
White marriage of a dissolute princess
When she arrived at the Russian court in 1744, there was no indication that she would cause a scandal in the future with her dissolute behavior. Her intimate relationship with her husband was far from ideal. Piotr, falling in love with a manor house over and over again (which he talked about openly with his wife), was not eager to fulfill his marital duties. Catherine was to remain a virgin five years after the wedding (or so she assured ) , and she began regular intercourse with the Tsar only after a decade.
And yet as a young girl she had her own - not insignificant - needs. Although when she stood at the altar, as she herself declared, she was completely innocent and had no idea about male-female relationships, she quickly began to discover her sexuality in a new environment. Her appetite for intimate adventures was only aroused by the reading she reads. Jerzy Besala describes:
Catherine was especially fascinated by the figure of the 14th-century Joan of Naples, a person of unbridled sexuality, enjoying the pleasure of giving herself to several men at the same time. It was also awakened by the famous Lives of the Frivolous Ladies de Brantôme, where it was swarming with all sorts of lewdness. Hormones raged in her. She was so young after all ...
There were many rumors about Catherine II
It's hard to say exactly when she got carried away with repressed passion - especially since for every fact about her intimate life there are some more or less absurd rumors.
Some of them were born at the tsarist court long before Catherine could even taste the pleasures of the flesh. It was rumored, among other things, that she had lost her virtue as a young girl, and even before moving to Russia, due to her exuberant libido, she experimented ... with a horse (Another version says that she decided to have intercourse with the stallion only as a mature woman - and he was the cause of her death).
The art of loving Catherine the Great
The tsarina was supposed to introduce Russian maids to the meanders of the French art of love (she herself allegedly learned the fellatio techniques from Parisian diplomats and emissaries, from whom she readily took lessons after official audiences ...). During World War II, in the estate of the ruler in Tsarskoye Selo, soldiers (depending on the version of the story - German or Russian) discovered an allegedly secret room of pleasure filled with erotic gadgets .
The Soviet authorities firmly denied that such a chamber even existed, but according to some they simply wanted to cover up an erotic scandal, and they had Katarzyna's lewd collection destroyed as early as 1950. Half a century later, German director Peter Woditsch tried to find traces of a hidden room.
The alleged room of pleasure was to be filled with furniture with erotic ornaments
In his documentary The Lost Secrets of Catherine the Great, he presented, among others, a series of photographs taken in 1941 by the discoverers of the secret room. They showed that apart from an exceptionally high sexual appetite, the ruler also had sadomasochistic tendencies. But in the end, Woditsch did not manage to conclude that the chamber of debauchery actually existed.
But there were certainly numerous sexual partners of the tsarina. Besides, she herself did not hide with them (and the first official lover, Sergei Saltykov, was suggested by her husband, later this task was taken on by her former favorite and close associate, Grigory Potemkin). At first, Piotr, who did not skimp on jumping to the side himself, did not seem to mind this, but eventually began to complain that the marriage bed was too tight.
Lover exam
As long as the tsar was alive (he died in 1762 of inflammation of the intestines and an attack of apoplexy) Catherine still kept her libido in check, but after his death ... soul, hell is gone! As a result of the palace coup, Katarzyna took over the reins in Russia - and at the same time gained absolute power over her own intimate life. Andrzej Andrusiewicz lists:
Ten official favorites passed through her imperial alcove. There were also several-month-old, several-day and one-day lovers, with no special privileges or powers. Some contemporary researchers (Viera Jurjewna Proskurina) counted 21 official favorites and talked about an undetermined number of short-term partners. She loved them in her own way. They were indispensable, but they were not the most important in her life.
Reportedly, during the first 13 years of independent rule, Piotr's widow "hired" 15 young men to fulfill her bedtime desires - they were called night emperors, performing a very special service to the motherland ...
Catherine the Great carefully selected lovers
However, not everyone could become Katarzyna's chosen one. The tsarina did not give her charms to just anyone. In order to provide her with only the most exquisite adepts of the art of lovemaking, a whole complex procedure was developed, a kind of "favorite exam". Jerzy Besala reports:
Empress Rogerson's doctor was engaged in the men's beauty contest. Catherine was presented with the portraits of the candidates, and when one liked them, he was promoted to a fligeladiutant and summoned to a doctor who examined whether he was infected with syphilis or gonorrhea.
From then on, from the empty rooms adjacent to the Tsarina's bedroom, Count Potemkin made a kind of a testing room. The candidate for the empress's lover was examined by Rogerson and the lady of the mouth. She checked - mainly Countess Bruce - the erotic skills and health of the candidates for the Tsarina's bed.
After successfully passing these tests, there was still one final exam - conducted by the main applicant. If the lover proved successful, he was led to a special room, where on the table lay a thousand (or even 100 thousand) rubles in gold - a generous payment for a successful meeting.
In an erotic swamp
Not everyone looked favorably at moral freedom in the imperial court during Catherine's reign. The English ambassador to Russia, James Howard Harris, disgusted, wrote:
Her court slowly became the scene of depravity and immorality. You can no longer expect the Empress to get out of this mess and expect that somehow, at an age when it is too late to improve, she will change for the better, whether in her public or private proceedings.
Catherine II was criticized for the same behavior that was turned a blind eye in the case of men
Not only was her above-average sexual appetite criticized, but also the fact that she was guided by her exuberant libido when making political decisions. Some people directly called her a nymphomaniac and claimed that Russia was in fact ruled not by the Tsarina, but by… coincidence and the country did not collapse merely "because of its natural balance."
However, while there are different assessments of her abilities as a ruler - and her successes in this field, the accusations of nymphomania seem exaggerated. After all, Katarzyna did nothing else that was not done before by generations of men in power. After all, since the dawn of history, kings, military commanders, and even priests have had crowds of lovers - and it did not offend anyone. The only difference is that the tsarina was a woman…