Petersburg was transformed from a primitive and forbidding city into one of the most beautiful and impressive European capitals.ĭespite her many public successes, Catherine is best known for her private excesses. She curried favor with the aristocracy, expanding their already great power over the Russian peasants.Ī patron of the arts, Catherine commissioned many statues and paintings. She undertook a wide range of political reforms, attempting to shape up the notoriously corrupt and incompetent Russian bureaucracy. As Empress, Catherine pursued an expansionist policy, fighting two successful wars against the Ottoman Empire and acquiring vast territory in southern Ukraine and the Crimea. At the age of 33, with the support of the Imperial guard, she overthrew her husband, the Emperor Peter III, who was soon killed "in a hunting accident," leaving Catherine the sole ruler of Russia. Endowed with both beauty and intelligence, she became strong friends (if not more) with the great thinkers of the day, including the brilliant French philosophers Rousseau and Diderot.Ĭatherine did not lack political ambition, however. Largely self-educated, Catherine immersed herself in the literature of the time. Catherine quickly learned Russian and joined the Russian Orthodox Church. At 16 she was married to Carl Peter Ulrich, the heir to the Russian throne. Leader of the Russians in Civilization Revolution 2Ĭatherine leads the Russians in Civilization Revolution 2.Ĭatherine (1729 - 1796 AD) was born in Szczecin in 1729, a princess of Pomerania, a small kingdom in Prussia.
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