Catharine I., wife of Peter the Great and empress of Russia, daughter of a Livonian peasant; “a little stumpy body, very brown,... strangely chased about from the bottom to the top of the world,... had once been a kitchen wench”; married first to a Swedish dragoon, became afterwards the mistress of Prince Menschikoff, and then of Peter the Great, who eventually married her; succeeded him as empress, with Menschikoff as minister; for a time ruled well, but in the end gave herself up to dissipation, and died (1682‒1727).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Catharine, St., of Alexandria * Catharine II. the Great