There are various instances in history of a woman of low
estate being chosen to share a monarch's throne, but only one, that of
Catharine of Russia, in which a poor stranger, taken from among the
ruins of a plundered town, became eventually the absolute sovereign of
that empire into which she had been carried as captive or slave.

It was in 1702, during the sharply contested war between Russia and
Sweden, that, while Charles XII. of Sweden was making conquests in
Poland, the Russian army was having similar success in Livonia and
Ingria. Among the Russian successes was the capture of a small town
named Marienburg, which surrendered at discretion, but whose magazines
were blown up by the Swedes. This behavior so provoked the Russian
general that he gave orders for the town to be destroyed and all its
inhabitants to be carried off.

Among the prisoners was a girl, Catharine by name, a native of Livonia,
who had been left an orphan at the age of three years, and had been
brought up as a servant in the family of M. Gluck, the minister of the
place. Such was the humble origin of the woman who was to become the
wife of Peter the Great, and afterwards Catharine I., Empress of Russia.

In 1702 Catharine, then seventeen years of age, married a Swedish
dragoon, one of the garrison of Marienburg. Her married life was a short
one, her husband being obliged to leave her in two days to join his
regiment. She never saw him again. She could neither read nor write,
and, like Mentchikof, never learned those arts. She was, however,
handsome and attractive, delicate and well formed, and of a most
excellent temper, being never known to be out of humor, while she was
obliging and civil to all, and after her exaltation took good care of
the family of her benefactor Gluck. As for her first husband, she sent
him sums of money until 1705, when he was killed in battle.

It was a common fate of prisoners of war then to be sold as slaves to
the Turks, but the beauty of Catharine saved her from this. After some
vicissitudes, she fell into the hands of Mentchikof, at whose quarters
she was seen by the czar. Struck by her beauty and good sense, Peter
took her to his palace, where, finding in her a warm appreciation of his
plans of reform and an admirable disposition, he made her his own by a
private marriage. In 1711 this was supplemented by a public wedding.

Catharine was soon able amply to reward the czar for the honor he had
conferred upon her.