Before they have gone far the carriage breaks, and Catherine is compelled to continue her journey on foot. When they have walked about a mile, they meet a peasant driving a country cart. Immediately Alexis Orloff seizes the horses, places the empress in the cart, and drives at full speed toward the capital.
The Emperor Peter III. sleeps quietly in his palace at Oranienbaum, while his wife, Catherine II., drives madly along the road from Peterhof to Petersburg, to place upon her head the imperial diadem of Russia.
At seven in the morning Catherine reached St. Petersburg. She immediately presented herself to the soldiers, assuring them that the Czar, her husband, intended to put her to death that very night, and that they were her only protection. This lie was believed at the moment, and the men swore to die in her defence.
The Orloffs raised a cry of “Long live the Empress Catherine!” and the soldiers echoed the shout. Their officers encouraged them, and when Villebois, general of artillery, ventured to remonstrate, Catherine turned upon him haughtily, told him she wanted no advice of his, but to know what he intended to do. The general, confounded at her assumed air of command, could only stammer, “To obey your Majesty!” and immediately delivered the arsenals and magazines of the city into her hands.
Thus in two hours did Catherine find herself upon the throne, with an army at her command, and the capital at her feet.
Meanwhile Peter III., totally unconscious of the usurpation of his unfaithful spouse, ordered his carriage, and set out for Peterhof, where he was informed of the revolt. This news threw him into such horror and confusion, that for a time he lost the use of his faculties. He could resolve on nothing, and his imbecility was like that of a terrified child.
Finally, however, he sat down and wrote a submissive letter to Catherine, acknowledging his errors, and proposing to share the sovereign authority with her. To this letter Catherine gave no reply, except to send Count Panin to the Czar, who persuaded him to sign a declaration that he was not fit to reign, and that he voluntarily abdicated the throne. Having done this, the poor, weak prince was carried off and locked up in the palace of Ropscha. “It was necessary that some apparent reason should be given for such extraordinary proceedings, and a short manifesto was accordingly set forth, proclaiming the accession of Catherine, without any mention of the unhappy emperor, but alleging as her only motives for assuming the government her tender regard for the welfare of the people, and above all for the holy and orthodox Greek religion, which she feared was exposed to total ruin; and this notable document of state villany thus concludes: ‘For these causes, etc., we, putting our trust in Almighty God and in his divine justice, have ascended the imperial throne of all the Russias, and have received a solemn oath of fidelity from all our faithful subjects.’ Dated June 28, 1762.
“Thus, by a revolution which never could have occurred under any other government than that of Russia, which few could account for and no one seemed to comprehend,—which was accomplished in the course of a single day, without injury to individuals, and without tumultuous violence,—did a young woman, a foreigner, and a stranger to the imperial blood, spring into the throne of the Czars.”
Catherine II., having thus established herself upon the throne, began to consider how she could best retain her newly acquired power. The first obstacle which presented itself to her mind was the Czar, Peter III. She had him under lock and key at Ropscha, it is true, but then he had his friends and his faithful Holstein guards, who had seen his downfall with grief and indignation. So Peter III. must be made an end of, and those most accomplished of villains, Orloff and Baratinsky, were sent to Ropscha to make an end of him, which deed they performed very satisfactorily both to themselves and to the empress, by strangling him in his dining apartment with a napkin.
The news of his death was announced to the empress as she was on the point of holding her court, but, as the proper precautions had not been taken, she did not choose to make it public, and went on with her audience with every appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity. On the following day, while dining in public, the death of the Czar was formally announced; and immediately she rose from the table, all bathed in tears, and retired to her apartment, where for several days she feigned the greatest grief. She afterward published a manifesto, in which she announced to her subjects “that it had pleased Almighty God to remove the late Emperor Peter the Third from this world, by a violent attack of a malady to which he had heretofore been subject, and desiring them to consider it as an especial act of Providence working in her favor.” None were stupid enough to believe this monstrous lie, and none were bold enough to contradict it, and this was answer sufficient for the Empress Catherine II.