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cushions. In this comfortable vehicle, with a squadron of cavalry galloping alongside, they proceeded to St. Petersburg. They reached theWinter Palace at noon on February 3. Their approach was signaled by the thunder of the guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress facing the icebound Neva River. Outside the palace, a guard of honor presented arms; inside, a crowd of people in bright-colored uniforms and silks and velvet smiled and bowed.
    Empress Elizabeth was not there; she had gone ahead to Moscow two weeks earlier, but many in the court and diplomatic corps remained behind, and Elizabeth had commanded that the visitors be given an imperial welcome. Johanna wrote to her husband:
    Here everything goes on in such magnificent and respectful style that it seemed to me … as if it all were only a dream.… I dine alone with the ladies and gentlemen whom Her Imperial Majesty has given me; I am served like a queen.… When I go in to dinner, the trumpets inside the house, and the drums of the guard outside sound a salute.… It does not seem real that all this can happen to poor me, for whom at only a few places a drum was ever stirred.
    It was not all for “poor me,” of course, but while her mother draped herself in these honors, Sophia stood by and watched. The truth was that she was more interested in the antics of fourteen elephants, presented to the empress by the Shah of Persia, performing tricks in the Winter Palace courtyard.
    To Frederick in Berlin, Johanna wrote in a different tone, presenting herself as his dutiful subject, working on his behalf. While the German princesses were being fitted with Russian wardrobes before proceeding to Moscow, Johanna had conversations with the two men in Russia whom Frederick had assigned to guide her. One was his own ambassador, Baron Mardefeld, the other the French minister, the Marquis de La Chétardie. The ambassadors reiterated that Vice-Chancellor Bestuzhev was fiercely opposed to the choice of Sophia as the bride of the heir. For this reason, they emphasized, he must be removed, and they counted on her assistance. Meanwhile, to put herself on the most amiable possible terms with the empress, they urged that she and her daughter hurry to Moscow in time to celebrate the new grand duke Peter’s sixteenth birthday on February 10.
    Guided by this advice, the two travelers left for Moscow on the night of February 5 in a cavalcade of thirty sledges. This time, they traveledsmoothly and swiftly over four hundred miles of hard-packed snow on the best-maintained road in Russia, the winter highway used by the empress. When they stopped to change horses, village people stared and told each other, “It is the bride of the grand duke.”
    At four o’clock on the fourth day—it was the afternoon of February 9, 1744—the cavalcade reached a rest house forty-five miles from Moscow. There they found a message from the empress requesting that they delay their entrance into Moscow until after dark. While waiting, they drank fish soup and coffee and dressed for their presentation to the monarch; Sophia put on a rose-colored silk gown trimmed with silver. Meanwhile, to increase the speed of their sledge, sixteen fresh horses replaced the relays of ten that had brought them this far. Back in their sledge, they hurtled forward, reaching the walls of Moscow before eight. The city was dark until they reached the Golovin Palace, whose courtyard was lit by flaring torches. The journey was over. Now, at the foot of a wide staircase in the entrance hall, stood Otto Brümmer, the writer of the empress’s summons, to welcome them. They had only a little time to speak, to remove their furs and smooth their gowns. Within a few minutes, fourteen-year-old Sophia would stand before the empress Elizabeth and her nephew, Grand Duke Peter, the two people who, for the next eighteen years, would dominate her life.
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Empress Elizabeth
    E LIZABETH HAD A FLAIR for the dramatic. On December 18, 1709, her father, Peter