What was Catherine the Great's opinion of the French Revolution?

by JeanJauresJr
ZechariahZevi

She was, unsurprisingly as a monarch, not terribly fond of it. Inna Gorbatov translates some of her correspondence on the subject in Catherine the Great and the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment, pp. 224-30. Here are some highlights:

Your penchant for the new philosophy and for liberty will probably lead you to support the popular cause. I shall be sorry, I shall remain an aristocrat: that is my métier.

(to the French ambassador, a few months after the fall of the Bastille 1789)

The ingratitude of the nation or rather of the French populace towards the king is the most striking part of the story. Instinctively I feel the greatest contempt for all popular movements [...]

(to Friedrich Melchior Baron von Grimm following Louis's flight to Varennes, 1791)

By 1793 she was even more emphatic:

They only know how to pillage and to kill. If the revolution spreads in Europe, one day a new Tamerlane will come to put a stop to it.

(to Grimm in December 1793)

Of course, that doesn't mean she had a high opinion of the French monarchy. Though she detested the revolution, Catherine was contemptuous of Louis XVI, and she blamed his misrule for triggering it. In the earliest stages of the revolution, she also allowed the Declaration of Rights, much of which she approved of in principle, to be printed in St Petersburg (Simon Dixon, Catherine the Great, p. 172.)

Following Louis's execution in 1793, Catherine broke off all relations with France and lent support to the counter-revolutionaries there -- though she also saw an opportunity in the war against France as a way of diminishing Prussian power and giving her a free hand in Poland. She died in 1796 while the War of the First Coalition was still ongoing.