Leaving the saintly Louisa, an entirely different type of royal womanhood demands our consideration, a type rendered noteworthy by sheer intellectual force. Catherine II., the Great, was the greatest woman, politically speaking, ever produced by the German nation; but her genius benefited, or rather raised to world power, a foreign and rival state, namely, the Russian empire (1762-1796). Born at Stettin in 1729, and the daughter of the petty Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine was married to Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, heir to the Russian throne, whose blind admiration for the great Frederick of Prussia alienated from him the affections of the Russian people; while Catherine identified herself with the Russians, whose future she was destined or determined to rule. Even as crown princess she led a notorious life, at first with Count Soltikof, and later with Count Poniatowski, afterward the ill-fated king of dying Poland; but she never forgot to strengthen herself, all the while, politically, and to secure all the instruments of power against her hated and despised husband. Peter was deposed, imprisoned, and strangled by Gregory Orloff, Catherine's paramour, certainly not without her knowledge (July, 1762). As empress, she forcibly obtained for Russia a controlling influence in the councils of Europe, while civilizing her people and mightily fostering the arts and sciences. Her literary and epistolary works and correspondence with the greatest men of her time prove her to have been a woman of extraordinary genius and literary capacity. As all her talents seemed to be out of proportion to womanly limitations, so were her immorality and passion. She ruled with an iron hand, through a succession of favorites or recognized lovers who, it must be confessed, had nothing to recommend them but the physical advantages of form and animal strength. The brutal Orloff, whom she raised from a low station, maintained himself longest in her favor, until his aspiration for the hand of his imperial mistress worked his undoing. Other men, selected partly from the ranks of the common soldiers, followed in rapid succession; finally, Gregory Potemkin became the most powerful of all of them, until he was banished from the court for trying to win Catherine in lawful marriage. Potemkin endeavored, though with barbarous methods, to build up southern Russia, and remained Catherine's favorite, at a distance, till his death. Meanwhile, she chose her later lovers merely for personal gratification, so as not to endanger her autocracy by the presumption of powerful men. She had brought about the election of her favorite Poniatowski as King of Poland, but she tore the kingdom to pieces when she recognized that the conquest of Poland alone could make her beloved Russia a civilized European or Western power. The domestic reforms which she instituted along all the lines of political, economic, and sociological endeavor