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What Happened to the Severed Head of Peter the Great's Wife's Lover

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The Kunstkamera of St. Petersburg, Russia, is an art and ethnography museum stuffed full of more than 2,000,000 objects. Within its blue-and-white walls, you can find a taxidermied pangolin , Native American baskets, and more than a dozen jarred, pickled fetuses floating in a suspicious yellow liquid, prepared by Dutch anatomist Frederick Ruysch . What you won’t find, however, is what’s often cited as one of its main attractions : the severed head of the supposed lover of Peter the Great’s wife, in a glass jar.
William Mons was young, German, and exceptionally dashing— at least one observer described him as one of the “best-made and most handsome men I have ever seen.” He was ambitious and opportunistic, with a keen eye for which patrons might have his interests close at heart. These attributes shot him into the upper echelons of imperial Russia. Eventually, in 1724, he became the secretary and confidant of Catherine, the empress and Peter the Great’s wife. No one can say for sure whether their relationship was exclusively professional, however. “Lurid stories circulated,” writes historian Robert K. Massie , in his biography of the emperor, “including one that Peter had found his wife with Mons one moonlit night in a compromising position in her garden.”
There are plenty of reasons to doubt this story, Massie says. Taking a lover seems out of character for Catherine, who was very fond of Peter and well-acquainted with his furious temper. On top of that, the “moonlit night,” had it happened, would have been in November—no time for an outdoor tryst in frigid St. Petersburg. But other stories about Mons were also being shared, ones with more obvious basis in fact, including that he was soliciting hefty bribes from anyone hoping to have a message passed to the empress.
Peter, when he found out about this behavior, moved swiftly. Late on a frosty Wednesday evening in early November 1724, Mons’s papers were seized. That night, he was taken away in chains. Within a week he was sentenced to death, despite an attempt by Catherine to seek a pardon from her husband. Eight days after his arrest, he was dead—publicly decapitated in front of crowds in central St. Petersburg. While he died, Catherine was practicing a minuet with her daughters and their dancing master, and withholding any trace of emotion from her husband and the eagle-eyed public.
The execution had a profound effect on Peter and Catherine’s relationship, Massie writes. Even a month after Mons’s death, whispers at court said that they hardly ate together and no longer slept in the same room, though this chill appeared eventually to thaw. In the meantime, Peter battled a bladder illness and cirrhosis. (He had been a hard-drinking man, inventor of the vodka “penalty shot” for anyone who arrived late to one of his feasts.) Three months after Mons’s death, the emperor followed him, aged 53.
But what happened to the head famously and publicly removed from Mons’s body? For reasons known to only to the emperor himself, Peter had Mons’s head pickled in spirits and placed in a large glass jar. A few years earlier, when his own lover, Mary Hamilton, was executed for crimes including abortion, infanticide, and theft, he had had her head preserved in a similar way. Some accounts claim he presented Catherine with her secretary’s head. Others maintain he forced her to keep it by her bed—as a warning, perhaps. Certainly, after the emperor died, she kept the head in her possession until her death. This has led at least one biographer to speculate that it served as a grisly memento of a man she may have loved.
A little over 25 years earlier, in Dresden, Peter the Great had visited a kunstkammer , or “cabinet of curiosities,” with a collection of rare books, mechanical clocks, and other wonders. He was so inspired that he resolved to start his own museum of natural history, which he opened in 1718. Peter offered Russians between three and 100 rubles for “specimens” of so-called “freaks of nature”—dead and pickled in spirits or double-distilled wine, or, more lucratively, alive. This was partly to dispel common beliefs that such “monsters,” as he referred to them, were the work of the devil, rather than the simple products of nature. Soon the collection boasted an eight-legged lamb, a two-headed baby, and other unusual natural phenomena. It came to be known, as it is today, as the Kunstkamera .
Catherine died in 1727, a little over two years after her husband. The head found its way into the Kunstkamera, where it remained for half a century, even through a devastating fire in 1747. In the 1780s, Catherine the Great, the wife of Peter the Great’s grandson, spotted it by Mary Hamilton’s head on a dusty shelf, while walking by with a friend. “Princess Dashkov and Catherine remarked on the wonderful preservation of the two beautiful young faces, still striking after the passage of fifty years,” the scholar Oleg Neverov wrote in 1985 . Some sense of propriety took hold, and she had them buried. Precisely where underground these two young, comely heads wound up seems to have been lost.
So you won’t find the severed head of Peter the Great’s wife’s lover in any museum, and certainly not in the Kunstkamera, not any more. But the Kunstkamera does have a veritable trove of human parts —heads, organs, limbs, and other medical artifacts. The story of Mons’s head—if not the head itself—fit right in.
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Scandalous Facts About Catherine The Great, The Scarlet Empress

Scandalous Facts About Catherine The Great, The Scarlet Empress

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Catherine wasn’t called “The Great” for nothing. Though she was one of the most enlightened women in the world, behind closed doors was a very different story. In the end, Catherine earned her title through blood, lust, and ultimate betrayal—and her scandalous rise and legendary fall is one for the ages. Learn more about one of history’s most ruthless empresses.
The future Catherine the Great of Russia had surprising beginnings. For one, her name wasn’t really Catherine—and she wasn’t really Russian. She was born the German Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst on May 2, 1729 to Prince Christian and Princess Johanna. But great women aren’t born, they’re made…and Catherine quickly showed how far she’d go for power.
Catherine’s mother Johanna was notorious around Europe as gossip-monger and glory hound, and the matron was bent on turning her daughter into a royal thirst trap. Over the years, Johanna schooled Catherine in fashionable French and rigorous etiquette, hoping to snag her an advantageous marriage. Yet even Johanna couldn’t have predicted just how “successful” she’d be.
Johanna had big dreams for her little girl, but even she must have been surprised when Catherine caught the eye of Peter III, AKA the heir to the Russian Empire. When Catherine was just 10, mommy dearest carted her off to meet the 11-year-old boy. Close in age, they could have been a great match— but it turned into an absolute nightmare.
Even at the tender age of 10, Catherine knew she despised Peter. They say that girls mature faster than boys, but in Peter’s case…this was true tenfold. Pale and sickly, the almost-teenaged Peter still played obsessively with toy soldiers—all while somehow nursing a burgeoning alcohol problem. Great combo there, bud. And that was just the beginning…
Though Catherine never had a classically beautiful face, she was still mega attractive, and men flocked to her for more than just the favors she could grant them. She had a high, wide forehead—considered the height of hot at the time—a greek nose, and large, intelligent eyes. She also had dark, thick hair that she often wore up in a perfectly coiffed do.
Catherine’s courting of Peter III couldn’t have started out more horribly, and not just because she was less than impressed with her beau-to-be. For one thing, her meddling mother Johanna got herself kicked out of court within a matter of months for offending the courtiers. Catherine only managed to hang on by working her charms overtime.
As a young girl, the whip-smart Catherine was rambunctious and easily bored. Left to her own devices, she got into as much trouble as she possibly could around her estate, and soon earned a reputation for being an incorrigible tomboy. Those closest to her even gave the young princess the sprightly, boyish nickname “Fike.”
As we’ll find out, Catherine would do anything—and I do mean anything—for that sweet, sweet Russian crown, including sticking it out with her idiot of a suitor, Peter. Catherine had a mean follow-through, and she soon applied herself to learning Russian with an obsessive focus, practicing at all hours of the night. This strain soon had devastating consequences.
Like most other European nobility at the time, Catherine and Peter III were related; they were second cousins. Just because it was common doesn’t make it any less gross, guys.
Though she never quite lost her accent, the German-born Catherine worked tirelessly to improve her Russian, and even took to walking around her bedroom barefoot in the middle of the night, practicing her pronunciation. Soon enough, she developed a raging case of pneumonia in 1744 that nearly felled her. Catherine’s response? Work harder.
Despite her long, scandalous life, Catherine was a sickly girl. Not only did she contract pneumonia in 1744, she also fell ill from a near-fatal case of pleuritis. But the cure was even worse than the sickness. To recover, she participated in the gruesome 18th-century practice of bloodletting, even suffering through four procedures in a single day. Ew.
Catherine the Great wasn’t turns out, so “great” when it came to her height. She was much shorter than many of her subjects imagined, particularly since she had such an outsized reputation. One of her correspondents remembered meeting her for the first time and being so surprised at how short Catherine was that she “could only stare at her.”
If Catherine could seem single-minded in her pursuit of power, well, buckle up—It goes deeper. On August 21, 1745, she actually married her pale little fiancé Peter, officially becoming Catherine Alekseyevna. Though she was barely 16 years old, her father didn’t even attend the dynastic nuptials. The worst, however, was yet to come.
Quick-witted, gorgeous, and curious, Catherine soon found she hated her dull new husband Peter even more than she thought she would, which says something. At first, she turned to books to stave off boredom, devouring Voltaire and learning Machiavellian power moves from Tacitus. For a while, Catherine was satisfied…until she began to feel a darker urge.
Catherine and Peter had set up their “young court” at the lavish Russian royal palace Oranienbaum, filling it with vibrant, good-looking nobles from all across the empire. This was a fatal mistake . Soon enough, Catherine’s bored eyes wandered over to the handsome Sergei Saltykov, and the pair began a lurid affair. Oh, but it gets even juicier.
According to Catherine herself, Sergei had one naughty claim to fame: He was the man who “took” her virginity, not her husband. That’s right, Catherine may have had the steel ovaries to go through with her miserable marriage to Peter, but the girl still had standards, and she refused to warm up his marriage bed. Which soon led to a lot of awkwardness.
Peter III gave as good as he got in his awful marriage. While Catherine soon took up with a series of lovers, Peter was off on his own extra-marital adventures, most famously courting the beautiful Elizaveta Vorontsova. There were even rumors that Peter wanted to divorce Catherine and live happily ever after with Elizaveta. That’s, uh, not what happened.
To this day, Catherine is Russia’s longest-reigning female ruler, with a reign of almost 35 years.
In early 1754, Catherine found herself pregnant, giving birth to a bouncing baby boy named Paul on October 1st of that year. But the child hid a dark secret . Catherine later claimed that little Paul wasn’t exactly his royal father’s son. According to her, the babe was Sergei Saltykov’s through and through…meaning the heir to all Russia was illegitimate.
Although it’s entirely possible the future Emperor of Russia was an illicit love child, historians actually disagree with Catherine—for one hilarious reason. Paul grew up stout and ugly, just like Peter III, whereas Catherine and her lover Sergei were reportedly 18th-century smokeshows. That’s right, experts debunked this saucy theory with a dignified game of hot or not.
Before you feel too bad for Peter III, you should know that he made Catherine’s life a living nightmare. While most the information we have is through the biased Catherine, Peter would reportedly drill all the male servants early in the morning with exhausting routines, waking everyone else up in the process. The Great needs her beauty sleep, Pete.
Interestingly, most historians don’t lay the “blame” on Catherine for her bedroom troubles (or lack thereof) with Emperor Peter III. Many experts believe that it was Peter who was somehow unable to consummate the marriage, or else they think he could have been infertile. So take that: It’s not all Catherine’s fault.
In the late 1750s, Catherine was pregnant again, this time giving birth to a little girl, Anna. Peter’s response to the birth was disturbing. Apparently he’d finally cottoned on to this whole cheating thing, and he refused to believe he was the girl’s father, saying, “God knows where my wife gets her pregnancies.” When Catherine protested, he only spat out, “Go to the Devil!”
Sadly, Anna’s life began in scandal and ended in sorrow. Catherine’s second child and likely only daughter lived to be just 14 months old before the frail girl passed on March 8, 1759. We all have different coping mechanisms, but Catherine’s mourning was pretty chilling. Whether out of cruel flippancy or the depths of grief, she almost never mentioned the girl again.
According to several historical records, in order to become a lover of Catherine the Great, there was an intimate test. Before being welcomed into Catherine’s bed, prospective suitors had to first satisfy Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, the beautiful Countess Praskovya Bruce. But as Bruce soon found out, this was far from a cushy position…
Catherine and Countess Bruce’s relationship didn’t exactly end well, at least according to reports. In 1779, an advisor happened to lead Catherine into a room— and she saw an utterly disturbing sight . One of her lovers was re- sampling Countess Bruce’s goods without Catherine’s permission. The Empress’s response was swift and brutal.
Without batting an eye, Catherine sent her now ex-lover into exile, shoving Countess Bruce along with him. Needless to say, the empress also relieved Bruce of her lady-in-waiting duties shortly after. For what it’s worth, when it comes to Catherine the Great, this was actually the merciful option. As we’ll see, she’d do much worse to better people.
Few people knew it at the time and even fewer people know it now, but Catherine was completely tone deaf. For all her refined tastes, she was so disabled in this respect that she had to receive a signal from her servants to tell her to applaud during operas, ballets, and other performances. She called music “infernal noise.”
On January 5, 1762, Catherine’s biggest ambition (so far) came true. Peter ascended to the Russian throne as Peter III, taking Catherine along with him as his “mere” consort. The upgrade in title also came with an upgrade in digs, and Peter and Catherine moved into the now famous Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Which is right about when Peter started messing it all up…
While some generously called Peter an “eccentric,” Catherine had no qualms calling him an “idiot” and “the drunkard.” When Peter became emperor, he really rose to those occasions, and for some reason bizarrely backed Russia’s old enemies, alienating himself even further from his wife in the process. Don’t worry, Catherine soon got even.
By July 1762, less than half a year after they’d become emperor and empress, Catherine and Peter were living in separate palaces. Bad for their crumbling marriage—but great for Catherine’s revenge. You see, for years she had been cultivating allies among her court for a coup d’etat , and she was now using all her “alone time” to ramp up a brutal taste of karma for her idiot husband.
Catherine was incredibly fond of horses and horse-riding, and spent much of the early part of her restless marriage riding. But since this is Catherine we’re talking about, she had to do it with a twist. She refused to ride side-saddle, and wrote, “The more violent the exercise, the more I enjoyed it.” This passion would crop up again in a horrifying way…
On July 9, 1762, Catherine finally put her chilling plan in motion. After hearing that Peter had detained one of her allies, she knew her attack had to come now—and what an attack it was. She marched down to the Russian regiment and, playing the poor, helpless woman, begged the men to save her from her “unhinged husband.” They did that and more.
Right after addressing the men, this “poor, helpless” woman went over to another bar
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