Catherine the Great
Empress, empire-builder, intellectual, art-collector, and lover - this magnificent new biography does full justice to a truly remarkable ruler. When Catherine II died in St Petersburg in 1796, the world sensed the loss of the most celebrated monarch of Europe - something no one would have predicted at the birth 67 years before of an obscure German princess, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, later married off to the pathetic heir to the Russian throne. There were few greater transformations of fortunes in history. Sophie/Catherine had come to rule in her own right over the largest state in existence since the fall of the Roman Empire. She was branded both a usurper and an assassin when she seized power from her wretched husband in 1762. Yet she...
Издательство:
Profile Books
Дата выхода: август 2011