44 
RIDING AHEAD of Catherine’s advancing army, a group of horsemen led by Alexis Orlov galloped into the Peterhof park and set about disarming the helpless Holstein soldiers. Then, learning that Peter himself had left Peterhof, first for Kronstadt and then for Oranienbaum, Alexis hurried on to the second estate, six miles away, to seize the former emperor. At Oranienbaum, he found Peter with Elizabeth Vorontsova. A small carriage, unused for years and covered with dust, was brought out. Surrounded by an escort of mounted guards commanded by Alexis Orlov, the little carriage with Peter and Elizabeth inside started back for Peterhof.
Simultaneously, Catherine’s regiments were arriving at Peterhof. At eleven, the empress, in her uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards and riding her white horse, reached Peterhof and dismounted into a sea of cheering men. Between noon and one o’clock, the carriage bringing Peter drove into the palace grounds. There was a profound silence. Peter had been warned not to show himself or speak a word to the men through whose ranks his carriage passed. When he stepped out of the carriage, his first request was that he be allowed to see Catherine. It was refused. Not knowing when he would see Vorontsova again, believing that their parting would be temporary, he turned to say goodbye. They were never to see each other again. The former emperor was led up a stairway to a little room in the palace, where he surrendered his sword and the blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew. He was stripped of his high black boots and his green Preobrazhensky Guards uniform and left standing in his shirt and stockings, a pathetic, trembling figure. Eventually, an old dressing gown and a pair of slippers were provided.
Later that afternoon, Nikita Panin arrived from St. Petersburg and was sent by Catherine to see her husband. Panin found himself profoundly moved by the former emperor’s appearance. Years later, Panin said, “I count it the greatest misfortune of my life that I was forced to see Peter III that day under these conditions.” Panin’s message was that the former emperor was now a state prisoner and that his future would include “decent and convenient rooms” in the fortress of Schlüsselburg—where Peter had visited Ivan VI three months earlier. It was implied that from Schlüsselburg he would eventually be allowed to return to his duchy of Holstein. While the rooms in the fortress were being prepared, Peter was permitted to choose a place of temporary confinement. He selected Ropsha, a lonely but pleasant summerhouse and estate, fourteen miles away.
Catherine had no wish to add to her husband’s humiliation. She did not even trust herself to see him, uncertain whether she would see the boy who had been her friend eighteen years before when she first arrived in Russia or the drunken bully who had just shouted “Fool!” at her across a crowded room and threatened her with prison. Her concern was not to lose her grip on what, after years of waiting, she had finally achieved. Peter would have to be rendered harmless. It was impossible to send him back to his native Kiel, although he remained Duke of Holstein. In Holstein, he would always be an attraction to anyone wishing to use him as a rallying point against her. The king of Prussia would be nearby; why should Frederick not employ Peter as a pawn who might be converted back into a king? Her conclusion was that Peter, like Ivan VI, would have to be imprisoned in Russia.
Even in the countryside at Ropsha, Peter would remain a potential threat. To be certain that he would be guarded adequately, she appointed as chief jailer the stern, rough soldier Alexis Orlov, who already had done much to ensure the success of the coup. Along with Orlov, three other officers and a detachment of a hundred soldiers were given orders to make Peter’s life “as agreeable as possible and to provide what he wished for.” At six o’clock that evening, Peter left Peterhof for Ropsha in a large six-horse carriage with the blinds down, surrounded by an escort of Horse Guards. Inside the carriage with the former emperor were Alexis Orlov, Lieutenant Prince Bariatinsky, Captain Passek, and another officer.
Nikita Panin, Alexis and Gregory Orlov, and Kyril Razumovsky had all played significant roles in the coup that brought Catherine to power. Princess Dashkova, on the other hand, had been superfluous. She had ridden to Peterhof beside the empress and shared a narrow bed with her during a few hours of rest, but she had played no part in any of the critical decisions or actions. She was aware of the Orlovs but had no knowledge of Gregory’s particular role and status. This changed suddenly. After Peter had been driven off to Ropsha, Dashkova happened to enter the empress’s private apartment in the Peterhof Palace. She was surprised to find Lieutenant Orlov stretched out full-length on a couch, resting a leg that had been injured in a struggle with some of Peter’s Holsteiners. Orlov had before him a heap of sealed official papers which he was opening and reading. Catherine Dashkova, wholly unaware of the empress’s relationship with Gregory—whom the princess considered to be far beneath both the empress and herself in social class and intelligence—was infuriated at seeing the soldier so obviously at ease, reading state documents. “By what right are you reading papers which are no concern of yours?” she asked. “No one has a right to read them except the empress and those whom she especially appoints.”
“Exactly,” Orlov replied, smiling. “The empress asked me to open them.”
“I doubt that,” Dashkova replied. “They could have waited until Her Majesty had appointed someone who was qualified to read them. Neither you nor I are sufficiently experienced in these matters,” she said, and left the room.
Returning later, she found Orlov still reclining on the couch, and, this time, the empress, relaxed and happy, was sitting beside him. A table set for supper for three was drawn up beside the couch. Catherine welcomed Dashkova and invited her to join them. During the meal, the princess noted the deference with which the empress treated the young officer, nodding and laughing at whatever he said, making no effort to hide her affection for him. It was at that moment, Dashkova wrote later, that “I realized with unspeakable pain and humiliation that a liaison existed between the two.”
The long day was not over. Catherine was exhausted, but the officers and men of the Guards wanted to return to St. Petersburg to celebrate, and she wished to please them. Accordingly, the victorious empress left Peterhof that same night to return to St. Petersburg. She halted briefly for a few hours of sleep, and on Sunday morning, June 30, still in uniform and still riding her white horse, she made a triumphant entry into the capital. The streets were crowded with excited people; church bells pealed, drums rolled. She attended a mass and a solemn Te Deum—and went to bed. She slept until midnight, when a rumor that the Prussians were coming spread among the Izmailovsky Guards, many of them tipsy from the generous amounts of alcohol they had been drinking. Fearing that she had been kidnapped or assassinated, they left their barracks, marched to the palace, and demanded to see the empress. She rose, put on her uniform, and went out to reassure them that all was well: she was safe, they were safe, the empire was safe. Then she went back to bed and slept another eight hours.
At eight o’clock that night, Peter arrived at Ropsha. The stone house, built during the reign of Peter the Great, was surrounded by a park with a lake in which Empress Elizabeth had liked to fish. She had given it to Peter, her nephew. Alexis Orlov, responsible for the prisoner, lodged him in a small ground-floor room containing little more than a bed. The window blinds were kept closely drawn so that the soldiers posted around the building could not see in. Even at midday, the room remained in twilight. An armed sentry stood guard at the door. Peter, shut up inside, was not permitted to walk in the park or to take the air on the terrace outside. He was permitted, however, to write to Catherine, and over the next days, he wrote three letters to her. The first:
I beg Your Majesty to have confidence in me and to have the goodness to order the guards removed from the second room as the one I occupy is so small that I can hardly move in it. As Your Majesty knows, I always walk about in the room and my legs swell if I cannot do so. Also I beg you to order that no officers should remain in the same room with me since I must relieve myself and I cannot possibly do that in front of them. Finally, I beg Your Majesty not to treat me as a criminal as I have never offended Your Majesty. I commend myself to Your Majesty’s magnanimity and beg to be reunited in Germany with the person named [Elizabeth Vorontsova]. God will repay Your Majesty.
Your very humble, devoted servant,
Peter
Your Majesty can rest assured that I will not think or do anything against Your Majesty’s person or reign.
The second letter:
Your Majesty:
If you do not wish to destroy a man already sufficiently miserable, have pity on me and send me my only consolation, Elizabeth Romanovna [Vorontsova]. It would be the greatest act of charity of your reign. Also, if Your Majesty would grant me the right to see you for a moment, my highest wishes would be fulfilled.
Your humble servant,
Peter
The third letter:
Your Majesty:
Once again, I beg you, since I have followed your wishes in everything, to allow me to leave for Germany with the persons for whom I have already asked Your Majesty to grant permission. I hope your magnanimity will not permit my request to be in vain.
Your humble servant,
Peter
Catherine left the letters unanswered.
The first full day of Peter’s imprisonment was Sunday, June 30. The next morning, he complained that he had suffered a bad night and would never be able to sleep properly until he could sleep in his own bed from Oranienbaum. Catherine immediately had the bed, a large four-poster with a white satin coverlet, sent to him by wagon. Next, he asked that his violin, his poodle, his German doctor, and his black servant be sent to him. The empress ordered that all of these requests be granted; in fact, only the doctor arrived. Whenever the prisoner asked permission to take the air outside, Alexis opened the door, pointed to the armed sentry barring the way, and shrugged his shoulders.
Catherine and her advisers were still uncertain what to do with the former emperor. The original plan of imprisoning Peter in Schlüsselburg now seemed inadequate. Schlüsselburg was only forty miles from the capital and he would become the second deposed emperor imprisoned in this bastion. Sending him back to Holstein had been ruled out. But if not to Schlüsselburg or Holstein, where was he to go?
There is no evidence that Catherine ever concluded that Peter’s death was necessary to her own political—and perhaps physical—survival. She did agree with her advisers that he must be rendered “harmless.” Catherine was determined to take no risks, and her friends were aware of this determination. She was, on the other hand, too prudent to hint at the desirability of an unnatural death. It is possible, however, that the Orlovs had already guessed her inner thoughts and persuaded themselves that, as long as their mistress was not admitted into their confidence or given foreknowledge of their plans, they might safely rid her of this danger. Certainly, the Orlovs themselves had a strong motive for ending Peter’s life. Gregory Orlov was hoping to marry his imperial mistress, and Peter stood in his way. Even dethroned and imprisoned, Peter still would be, in the eyes of God, Catherine’s lawful husband; nothing but death could sever a marriage bond that had received the blessing of the Orthlodox Church. If, on the other hand, the former emperor were to die, there would be no religious bar to a marriage between Catherine and Gregory. Empress Elizabeth had married Alexis Razumovsky, a Ukranian peasant; he, Gregory, an officer of the Guards, was of a higher class and rank.
At Ropsha, mental confusion and fear of the unknown plagued Peter’s health. Alternately, he lay prostrate on his bed and rose to pace the small room. On Tuesday, the third day of his captivity, he was stricken by acute diarrhea. On Wednesday evening, he suffered a headache so violent that his Holstein physician, Dr. Luders, was brought from St. Petersburg. On Thursday morning, the former emperor seemed no better, and a second doctor was summoned. Later that day, the two doctors pronounced their patient recovering and, having no desire to share his incarceration, returned to the capital. On Friday, all was quiet. Then, early Saturday morning, Peter’s seventh day at Ropsha, while the prisoner still slept, his French valet, Bresson, who had been allowed to stroll in the park, was abruptly seized, gagged, thrust into a closed carriage, and driven away. Peter was not told and did not know. At two o’clock, Peter was invited to dinner with Alexis Orlov, Lieutenant Bariatinsky, and the other officers of his guard.
The only eyewitness to describe the subsequent event confessed to the empress herself. At six o’clock on Saturday evening, a rider galloping from Ropsha reached St. Petersburg and Catherine was handed a note from Alexis Orlov. It was written in Russian on a sheet of dirty gray paper. The handwriting was scrawled and almost illegible; its message verged on incoherence. The letter seemed to have been written by a man shaking from drink or frantic with worry. Or both.
Matushka, Little Mother, most merciful Gosudarina, sovereign lady, how can I explain or describe what happened? You will not believe your faithful servant, but before God I speak the truth, Matushka. I am ready for death, but I myself know not how it came about. We are lost if you do not have mercy on us. Matushka, he is no more. But no one intended it so. How could any of us have ventured to raise our hands against our Gosudar, sovereign lord. But, Gosudarina, it has happened. At dinner, he started quarreling and struggling with Prince Bariatinsky at the table. Before we could separate them, he was dead. We ourselves know not what we did. But we are all equally guilty and deserve to die. Have mercy on me, if only for my brother’s [Gregory’s] sake. I have confessed my guilt and there is nothing further for me to tell. Forgive us or quickly make an end of me. The sun will no longer shine for me and life is not worth living. We have angered you and lost our souls forever.
What had happened? The circumstances and cause of death, and the intentions and degree of responsibility of those involved, can never be known, but perhaps one can merge what is known and what can be imagined:
On Saturday, July 6, Alexis Orlov, Prince Theodore Bariatinsky, and others invited the prisoner to join them for midday dinner. It may be that they had spent the week wondering how long they were to be separated from their fortunate comrades celebrating in St. Petersburg while they were assigned to remain watching over this wretched, contemptible man. During the meal, everyone drank heavily. Then, because they had planned it, or because there was quarreling that soared out of control, they fell on Peter and attempted to suffocate him by placing him under a mattress. He struggled and escaped. They pinioned him, wrapped a scarf around his neck, and strangled him.
Whether Peter’s death was accidental, the result of a drunken scuffle after dinner that got out of control, or a deliberate, premeditated murder will never be known. The frantic, semicoherent tone of Orlov’s scribbled letter, seeming to betray fear of repercussion as well as horror and remorse, suggests that he had not planned to go that far. When he arrived in the capital that night, he was disheveled, bathed in sweat, and covered with dust. “His face,” said someone who happened to see him “wore an expression that was frightful to see.” Orlov’s pleas to Catherine for mercy—“We ourselves know not what we did” and “Forgive us or quickly make an end of me”—suggest that, while admitting that he was present when Peter died, this was not what he had planned.
In either case, whether the death was unintended or was planned in advance by the officers, Catherine herself would seem to have been innocent. However, she was not blameless. She had placed her husband in the hands of Alexis Orlov, knowing that Alexis was a soldier untroubled by violent death and that he hated Peter. But Orlov’s letter shocked Catherine. Its frantic language and desperate pleas make it almost impossible to believe that Catherine had previous knowledge of any intent to murder and had given her consent. Nor was Alexis Orlov the kind of sophisticated, duplicitous writer who could manage to concoct so frenzied and abject a story. In the mind of Princess Dashkova, Orlov’s letter exonerated Catherine of all suspicion of complicity. When Dashkova visited her friend on the following day, she was greeted by Catherine’s words, “My horror at this death is inexpressible. This blow strikes me to the earth!” The princess, still equating her role in events with that of the empress, could not refrain from saying, “It is a death too sudden, Madame, for your glory and for mine.”
Whatever happened, Catherine had to deal with the aftermath. Her husband, the former emperor, was dead in the custody of her friends and supporters. Would she arrest Alexis Orlov and the other officers at Ropsha? If she did so, how would Gregory, the father of her three-month-old child, react? How would the Guards react? How would the Senate, St. Petersburg, and the Russian people react? Her decision, made, perhaps, on Panin’s recommendation, was to treat the death as a medical tragedy. To deal with the widespread knowledge that the officers guarding her husband were known to have hated him, she ordered a postmortem examination. She had the body dissected by doctors who could be trusted to clear Orlov. The doctors opened the body, and, as they were told to do, looked only for evidence of poisoning. Reporting that there was no such evidence, they declared that Peter had died of natural causes, probably an acute hemorrhoidal attack—a “colic”—which had affected his brain and brought on an apoplectic stroke. Catherine then issued a proclamation, composed with Panin’s assistance:
On the seventh day of our reign we received the news to our great sorrow and affliction that it was God’s will to end the life of the former emperor Peter III by a severe attack of hemorrhoidal colic. We have ordered his mortal remains to be taken to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. We ask all our faithful subjects to bid farewell to his earthly remains without rancor and to offer up prayers for the salvation of his soul.
Panin also advised that the body be exhibited in as nearly normal a fashion as could be managed; he believed it wiser to display a dead Peter than to risk fostering the belief that he was still alive, hidden away somewhere, and might reappear. The former emperor’s body, lying in state in St. Petersburg’s Alexander Nevsky Monastery, had been forced into the blue uniform of a Holstein cavalry officer, apparel that Peter had delighted in wearing when he was alive but which, on this occasion, was intended to draw attention to his foreign origins and preferences. On his chest, he wore no medal or ribbon. A three-cornered hat, a size too large, covered his forehead, but the part of his face remaining uncovered and visible was black and swollen. A long, wide cravat was wound around his neck up to his chin around what—had the dead man been throttled—must have been a bruised and discolored throat. His hands, which it was the custom of the Orthodox Church to leave bare and holding a cross, were encased in heavy leather riding gloves.
The body was placed on a bier with candles at the head and feet. The line of viewers, kept moving quickly by soldiers, saw no Catherine kneeling and praying over her husband as she had done for Empress Elizabeth. Her absence, it was explained, was a result of an appeal from the Senate that she not attend, “so that Her Imperial Majesty might spare her health out of love for the Russian Fatherland.” The site of Peter’s interment was also unusual. Although he was the grandson of Peter the Great, the dead Peter III had not been crowned, and therefore could not lie in the fortress cathedral with the remains of consecrated tsars and empresses. On July 23, Peter’s remains were placed in the Nevsky Monastery alongside the body of Regent Anna Leopoldovna, mother of the deposed and imprisoned Ivan VI. Here Peter was to lie throughout his wife’s thirty-four-year reign.
Catherine’s explanation of this sequence of events was conveyed in a letter to Stanislaus Poniatowski, written two weeks after her husband’s death:
Peter III had lost the few wits he had. He wanted to change his religion, break up the Guards, marry Elizabeth Vorontsova, and shut me up. On the day of celebrating the peace with Prussia, after publicly insulting me at dinner, he ordered my arrest the same evening. The order was retracted, but from that time I listened to proposals [that she replace Peter on the throne] that had been made to me since the death of Empress Elizabeth. We could count on many captains of the Guards. The secret was in the hands of the Orlov brothers. They are an extremely determined family and much loved by the common soldiers. I am under great obligation to them.
I sent the deposed emperor to a remote and very agreeable spot called Ropsha, under the command of Alexis Orlov with four officers and a detachment of picked, good-natured men, while decent and convenient rooms were being prepared for him at Schlüsselburg. But God disposed otherwise. Fear had caused a diarrhea which lasted three days and ended on the fourth when he drank excessively.… A hemorrhoidal colic seized him and affected his brain. For two days he was delirious and then delirium was followed by extreme exhaustion. Despite all the help the doctors could give him, he died while demanding a Lutheran priest. I feared that the officers might have poisoned him so I had him opened up, but not the slightest trace of poison was found. The stomach was quite healthy, but the lower bowels were greatly inflamed and a stroke of apoplexy carried him off. His heart was extraordinarily small and quite decayed.
So at last God has brought everything to pass according to His designs. The whole thing is rather a miracle than a pre-arranged plan, for so many lucky circumstances could not have coincided unless God’s hand had been over it all. Hatred of foreigners was the chief factor in the whole affair and Peter III passed for a foreigner.
Most of Europe held Catherine responsible. Journals and newspapers across the continent wrote of a return to the days of Ivan the Terrible. Many were cynical about the officially proclaimed explanation that the emperor had died of “colic.” “Everyone knows the nature of colic,” quipped Frederick of Prussia. “When a heavy drinker dies from colic, it teaches us to be sober,” deadpanned Voltaire. Frederick nevertheless believed that Catherine herself was innocent. In his memoirs, he wrote:
The empress was quite ignorant of this crime and learned of it with an indignation and despair which was not feigned. She correctly foresaw the judgment which all the world now passes on her. An inexperienced young woman, on the point of being divorced and shut up in a convent, she had committed her cause to the Orlov brothers. And, even so, she had known nothing of the intention to murder the emperor. Left to herself, she would have kept Peter alive, partly because she thought that once she was crowned, all would be well, and that so cowardly an enemy as her husband would not be dangerous. The Orlovs, more audacious and clear-sighted, foreseeing that the ex-emperor might be turned into a rallying point against them, had been made of sterner stuff and had put out him of the way. She has reaped the fruits of their crime and has been obliged, in order to secure their support, not only to spare, but even to retain about her person, the authors of that crime.
Catherine, however much she might pretend to ignore foreign comment and gossip, was never at ease about Europe’s reaction to her husband’s death. Years later, in conversation with the French Enlightenment figure and Encyclopedist Denis Diderot, her guest in St. Petersburg, she asked, “What do they say in Paris of the death of my husband?” Diderot was too embarrassed to answer. To relieve his discomfort, she turned the conversation in another direction.
There was another interested party in the matter of Catherine’s possible involvement, who, years later, after reading Alexis Orlov’s letter, exonerated the empress of guilt in the death of Peter III. Having received and read Orlov’s letter, Catherine locked it away in a drawer. For the rest of her life, she kept the letter hidden. After her death, her son, Emperor Paul, was told that the letter had been discovered and that the handwriting had been identified as that of Alexis Orlov. Paul read the letter. It convinced him that his mother was innocent.
None of the participants was ever punished. Although, by proceeding against them, she could have established or at least powerfully reinforced her own innocence, Catherine could hardly have punished them. It was to Alexis Orlov and his brothers that she owed her throne. It was Alexis who had come to awaken her at dawn at Mon Plaisir and bring her to St. Petersburg. He and his brothers had risked their lives for her; in return, she was obligated to protect them. She therefore declared that Peter had died of natural causes. Some in Russia believed her; some did not; many did not care.
It was a death she had not planned, but it suited her purpose. She was free of her husband, but had acquired another burden: the shadow over her character and over Russia remained for the rest of her life. This was not the first time in history—nor would it be the last—that this kind of mixed blessing has befallen the ruler of a nation. Henry II of England appointed his former friend and protégé Thomas à Becket, to be archbishop of Canterbury. When, later, Becket confronted and opposed the king on many issues regarding the church, Henry believed himself betrayed. “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” he burst out in a moment of frustration. Whereupon four of his household knights spurred their horses to Canterbury and murdered the archbishop in front of his cathedral altar. In penance for this act that he did not specifically intend, Henry walked barefoot down miles of dusty roads to the cathedral, where he kneeled before the altar and asked forgiveness. Catherine, less secure on her throne, could not risk a similar gesture.
The dream of the child in Stettin who wanted to be a queen, and the ambition of the grand duchess who knew that she was better suited than her husband to rule, were achieved. Catherine was thirty-three. Half of her life lay ahead of her.
*George Lewis was Catherine’s mother’s younger brother, and Peter’s second cousin. This was the young man who had believed himself in love with Catherine—then Sophia, a girl of fourteen.