Then leaving the Princess under the guard of some forty grenadiers, he proceeded with eighty others to arrest the chief of the state, the terrible Duke of Courland.
They traversed without impediment the streets of St. Petersburg; reached the palace of the Regent; entered it; and Munich sent Manstein to arrest the Duke in his bed-chamber, living or dead. The officers on duty, the sentinels, and the servants looked on. “Had there been a single officer or soldier faithful,” says Manstein, in his memoirs, “we were lost.” But there was not one. Biren, perceiving the soldiers, endeavoured to escape by creeping under the bed. Manstein had him forced out: Biren defended himself. He received some blows from the butt-ends of their muskets, and was then conveyed to the guard-house.
The coup d’état was accomplished. But something stranger still was soon to follow.
Biren was detested; that might explain his fall. The new Regent, on the contrary—a good and gentle creature, who gave umbrage to no one while she gave much love to the Ambassador Linar—was even liked a little from hatred to Biren. A year passed. All was tranquil. But the court of France was dissatisfied with an Austro-Russian alliance which the Regent had just concluded with Maria Theresa. How was this alliance to be prevented? Nothing easier. It was only to make a coup d’état, and expel the Regent. In this case, we have not even a marshal reverenced by the soldiers, not even a statesman. An intriguing physician, Lestocq, and an intriguing ambassador, La Chétardie, are sufficient to carry to the throne, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I.
Elizabeth, absorbed in pleasures and petty intrigues, little thought of overturning the government. She was led to believe that the Regent intended to shut her up in a convent. She, Elizabeth, who spent her time in the barracks of the guards, and in licentious excesses ... better make herself Empress! So also thought La Chétardie; and he did more than think; he gave French gold to hire a handful of soldiers.
On the 25th of November, 1741, the Grand Duchess, dressed in a magnificent robe, and with a brilliant cuirass on her breast, presented herself at the guard-house of the Preobrajensky regiment. She exposed to the soldiers her unhappy condition. They, reeking with wine, cried out, “Command, mother, command, and we will slaughter them all!” The charitable Grand Duchess recoils with horror, and only orders the arrest of the Regent, her husband, and their son—the baby-Emperor.
Once again is the old scene repeated.
Anthony Ulrich, of Braunschweig, is awakened from the most profound slumber; but this time he cannot relapse into it again, for two soldiers wrap him up in a sheet and carry him to a dungeon, which he will leave only to go and die in exile.
Again is the coup d’état accomplished.
The new reign seems to go on wheels. And once more nothing is wanting to this strange crown ... but an heir. The Empress who will have nothing to do with the little Ivan, seeks one in the Episcopal palace of the Prince-Bishop of Lubeck. It is the nephew of the Bishop whom she selects, a grandson of Peter I, an orphan without father or mother, and the intended husband of the little Sophia Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst-Bernburg, who resigned all these sonorous and illustrious titles to be called simply ... Catherine II.