er, who was a
convinced Lutheran, was strongly opposed to his daughter's conversion,
and supplied her with books of controversy to protect her Protestantism.
She read them, and she listened to Todorskiy, and to other advisers who
told her that the Russian crown was well worth a mass, or that the
differences between the Greek and Lutheran churches were mere matters of
form. On the 28th of June 1744 she was received into the Orthodox Church
at Moscow, and was renamed Catherine Alexeyevna. On the following day
she was formally betrothed, and was married to the archduke on the 21st
of August 1745 at St Petersburg.

At that time Catherine was essentially what she was to remain till her
death fifty-one years later. It was her boast that she was as "frank and
original as any Englishman." If she meant that she had a compact
character, she was right. She had decided on her line in life and she
followed it whole-heartedly. It was her determination to become a
Russian in order that she might the better rule in Russia, and she
succeeded. She acquired a full command of all the resources of the
language, and a no less complete understanding of the nature of the
Russian people. It is true that she remained quite impervious to
religious influences. The circumstances of her conversion may have
helped to render her indifferent to religion, but their influence need
not be exaggerated. Her irreligion was shared by multitudes of
contemporaries who had never been called upon to renounce one form of
Christianity and profess belief in another in order to gain a crown. Her
mere actions were, like those of other and humbler people, dictated by
the conditions in which she lived. The first and the most important of
them was beyond all question the misery of her married life. Her husband
was a wretched creature. Nature had made him mean, the smallpox had made
him hideous, and his degraded habits made him loathsome. And Peter had
all the sentiments of the worst kind of small German prince of the time.
He had the conviction that his princeship entitled him to disregard
decency and the feelings of others. He planned brutal practical jokes,
in which blows had always a share. His most manly taste did not rise
above the kind of military interest which has been defined as
"corporal's mania," the passion for uniforms, pipeclay, buttons, the
"tricks of parade and the froth of discipline." He detested the
Russians, and surrounded himself with Holsteiners. Fo