Catherine hired John Paul Jones at some point, too.
She also had to put up with an unpopular Swedish king that was constantly wagging the dog in Russia’s direction to try to get his subjects to rally to him. I think that king was later assassinated.
Anyway, European monarchies were all on edge after the success of the American Revolution.
Before Jimmy Page did?
For the Swede king in ended poorly. But parallels to the modern days are astonishing. The first Russian hoax indeed