excerpt from the book...A COMEDY QUEEN"It was to a noise like thunder, and close clasped in a soldier'sembrace, that Catherine I. made her first appearance in Russianhistory."History, indeed, contains few chapters more strange, more seeminglyimpossible, than this which tells the story of the maid-of-all-work--thered-armed, illiterate peasant-girl who, without any dower of beauty orcharm, won the idolatry of an Emperor and succeeded him on the greatestthrone of Europe. So obscure was Catherine's origin that no recordsreveal either her true name or the year or place of her birth. All thatwe know is that she was cradled in some Livonian village, either inSweden or Poland, about the year 1685, the reputed daughter of aserf-mother and a peasant-father; and that her numerous brothers andsisters were known in later years by the name Skovoroshtchenko orSkovronski. The very Christian name by which she is known to historywas not hers until it was given to her by her Imperial lover.