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SLANDER
THROUGH THE CENTURY

Peter III -
unknown Russian emperor

The poet gives a lesson to historians

In Russian history, there is, perhaps, no ruler more blasphemed by historians than Emperor Peter III.

Even about the crazy sadist Ivan the Terrible, the authors of historical studies speak better than about the unfortunate emperor. What epithets did not the historians of Peter III have awarded: "spiritual insignificance", "revelry", "drunkard", "Holstein soldier" and so on and so forth.
How did the emperor, who reigned for only six months (from December 1761 to June 1762), be guilty of the learned men?

Holstein prince

The future emperor Peter III was born on February 10 (21 - according to the new style) February 1728 in the German city of Kiel. His father was Duke Karl Friedrich Holstein-Gottorp, the ruler of the North German land of Holstein, and his mother was the daughter of Peter I, Anna Petrovna. As a child, Prince Karl Peter Ulrich Holstein-Gottorp (that was the name of Peter III) was declared heir to the Swedish throne.

Emperor Peter III

However, at the beginning of 1742, at the request of the Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, the prince was taken to St. Petersburg. As the only descendant of Peter the Great, he was declared heir to the Russian throne. The young Duke of Holstein-Gottorp converted to Orthodoxy and was named Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich.
In August 1745, the empress married the heir to the German princess Sophia Frederick Augusta, daughter of Prince Anhalt-Zerbst, who was in the military service of the Prussian king. Having adopted Orthodoxy, the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst began to be called the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna.

Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna - future Empress Ekaterina II

The heir and his wife could not stand each other. Pyotr Fedorovich had mistresses. His last passion was Countess Elizaveta Vorontsova, daughter of General-in-Chief Roman Illarionovich Vorontsov. Ekaterina Alekseevna had three permanent lovers - Count Sergei Saltykov, Count Stanislav Ponyatovsky and Count Chernyshev. Soon the officer of the Life Guards Grigory Orlov became the favorite of the Grand Duchess. However, she often amused herself with other guard officers.
On September 24, 1754, Catherine gave birth to a son, who was named Paul. It was rumored at court that the real father of the future emperor was Catherine's lover, Count Saltykov. Pyotr Fedorovich himself smiled bitterly:
“God knows where my wife gets her pregnancy from. I don't really know if this is my child and if I should take it personally ...

Short reign

On December 25, 1761, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna rested in Bose. Peter Fyodorovich, Emperor Peter III, ascended the throne.
First of all, the new sovereign ended the war with Prussia and withdrew the Russian troops from Berlin. For this, Peter was hated by the guards officers, who yearned for military glory and military awards. Unhappy with the actions of the emperor and historians: pundits complain that de Peter III "nullified the results of Russian victories."
It would be interesting to know exactly what results do the respected researchers have in mind?
As you know, the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763 was caused by the aggravation of the struggle between France and England for overseas colonies. For various reasons, seven more states were drawn into the war (in particular, Prussia, which was in conflict with France and Austria). But what interests the Russian Empire pursued, acting in this war on the side of France and Austria, is completely incomprehensible. It turned out that Russian soldiers died for the right of the French to plunder the colonial peoples. Peter III put an end to this senseless slaughter. For which he received a "severe reprimand with entry" from grateful descendants.

Soldiers of the army of Peter III

After the end of the war, the emperor settled in Oranienbaum, where, according to historians, he "indulged in drunkenness" with his Holstein companions. However, judging by the documents, from time to time Peter was engaged in state affairs. In particular, the emperor wrote and promulgated a number of manifestos on the transformation of the state system.
Here is a list of the first measures that Peter III outlined:
First, the Secret Office was abolished - the famous secret state police, which terrified all subjects of the empire, without exception, from a commoner to a noble nobleman. According to one denunciation, the agents of the Secret Chancellery could seize any person, imprison him in casemates, betray him to the most terrible tortures, and execute him. The emperor freed his subjects from this arbitrariness. After his death, Catherine II re-established the secret police - called the "Secret Expedition".
Secondly, Peter declared freedom of religion for all his subjects: "let them pray to whoever they want, but not to have them outraged or cursed." It was an almost unthinkable step for that time. Even in enlightened Europe there was still no complete freedom of religion. After the death of the emperor, Catherine II, a friend of the French enlighteners and "philosopher on the throne", canceled the decree on freedom of conscience.
Thirdly, Peter abolished church supervision over the personal lives of his subjects: "to have no condemnation of an adulterous sin, for Christ did not condemn either." After the death of the tsar, church espionage was revived.
Fourth, realizing the principle of freedom of conscience, Peter stopped persecuting Old Believers. After his death, the government resumed religious persecution.
Fifth, Peter announced the release of all the monastery serfs. He subordinated the monastic estates to civil collegia, gave arable land to the former monastic peasants for eternal use, and overlaid them with only ruble dues. For the maintenance of the clergy, the tsar appointed "his own salary".
Sixth, Peter allowed the nobles to travel abroad unhindered. After his death, the "iron curtain" was restored.
Seventh, Peter announced the introduction of Russian Empire a public court. Catherine canceled the publicity of the proceedings.
Eighth, Peter issued a decree on the "lack of silver service", forbidding to present gifts of peasant souls and state lands to senators and government officials. Only orders and medals were to be signs of encouragement for senior officials. Having ascended the throne, Catherine first of all endowed her comrades-in-arms and favorites with peasants and estates.

One of the manifestos of Peter III

In addition, the emperor prepared a host of other manifestos and decrees, including those on limiting the personal dependence of peasants on landowners, on the non-obligation of military service, on the non-obligation of observing religious fasts, etc.
And all this was done in less than six months of the reign! Knowing this, how can you believe the tales about the "unrestrained drunkenness" of Peter III?
It is obvious that the reforms that Peter intended to carry out were long ahead of their time. Could their author, who dreamed of affirming the principles of freedom and civic dignity, be a "spiritual insignificance" and a "Holstein soldier"?

So, the emperor was engaged in state affairs, in between which, according to historians, he smoked in Oranienbaum.
And what was the young empress doing at this time?
Ekaterina Alekseevna with her many lovers and hangers-on settled in Peterhof. There she actively intrigued against her husband: she gathered supporters, spread rumors through her lovers and their drinking companions, and attracted officers to her side.
By the summer of 1762, a conspiracy had arisen, the soul of which was the empress. The conspiracy involved influential dignitaries and commanders:
Count Nikita Panin, actual privy councilor, chamberlain, senator, educator of Tsarevich Paul;
his brother Count Pyotr Panin, general-in-chief, hero of the Seven Years War;
Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, nee Countess Vorontsova, Catherine's closest friend and companion;
her husband, Prince Mikhail Dashkov, one of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Masonic organization; Count Kirill Razumovsky, Marshal, Commander of the Izmailovsky Regiment, Hetman of Ukraine, President of the Academy of Sciences;
Prince Mikhail Volkonsky, diplomat and commander of the Seven Years War;
Baron Korf, chief of the St. Petersburg police, as well as numerous officers of the Life Guards led by the Orlov brothers.
According to a number of historians, influential Masonic circles were involved in the conspiracy. In the immediate circle of Catherine, the "free masons" were represented by a certain mysterious "Mr. Odar". According to an eyewitness to the events of the Danish envoy A. Schumacher, the famous adventurer and adventurer Count Saint-Germain was hiding under this name.
Events was accelerated by the arrest of one of the conspirators, Lieutenant-Captain Passek.

Count Alexey Orlov - assassin of Peter III

On June 26, 1762, the Orlovs and their friends began to solder the soldiers of the capital's garrison. With the money that Catherine borrowed from the English merchant Felten, allegedly to buy jewelry, more than 35 thousand buckets of vodka were bought.
On the morning of June 28, 1762, Catherine, accompanied by Dashkova and the Orlov brothers, left Peterhof and headed for the capital, where everything was already ready. The dead drunken soldiers of the guards regiments took the oath to "Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna", a heavily drunk crowd of townsfolk greeted the "dawn of a new reign".
Peter III with his retinue was in Oranienbaum. Having learned about the events in Petrograd, the ministers and generals betrayed the emperor and fled to the capital. With Peter remained only the old Field Marshal Munnich, General Gudovich and a few close associates.
On June 29, the emperor, amazed by the betrayal of the most trusted people and not wanting to get involved in the struggle for the hateful crown, abdicated the throne. He wanted only one thing: to be released to his native Holstein with his mistress Ekaterina Vorontsova and faithful adjutant Gudovich.
However, by order of the new ruler, the deposed king was sent to the palace in Ropsha. On July 6, 1762, the brother of the Empress's lover, Alexei Orlov, and his drinking companion, Prince Fyodor Baryatinsky, strangled Peter. It was officially announced that the emperor "died of intestinal inflammation and stroke" ...

So, the facts do not give any reason to consider Peter III "insignificant" and "soldier". He was weak-willed, but not feeble-minded. Why do historians so stubbornly blaspheme this sovereign?
Petersburg poet Viktor Sosnora decided to sort out this problem. First of all, he was interested in the question: from what sources did the researchers draw (and continue to draw!) The dirty gossip about the "dementia" and "insignificance" of the emperor?
And this is what was discovered: it turns out that the sources of all the characteristics of Peter III, all these gossip and fables are the memoirs of the following persons:
Empress Catherine II - who hated and despised her husband, who was the inspirer of the conspiracy against him, who actually directed the hand of Peter's killers, who, finally, as a result of the coup, became an autocratic ruler;
Princess Dashkova, a friend and associate of Catherine, who hated and despised Peter even more (contemporaries gossiped: because Peter preferred her older sister, Yekaterina Vorontsova), who was the most active participant in the conspiracy, who after the coup became the "second lady of the empire" ;
Count Nikita Panin, a close associate of Catherine, who was one of the leaders and the main ideologist of the conspiracy against Peter, and soon after the coup became one of the most influential nobles and headed the Russian diplomatic department for almost 20 years;
Count Pyotr Panin, Nikita's brother, who was one of the active participants in the conspiracy, and then became a trusted and affectionate military leader (it was Pyotr Panin that Catherine instructed to suppress the uprising of Pugachev, who, by the way, declared himself "Emperor Peter III").
Even without being a professional historian and not being familiar with the intricacies of source study and criticism of sources, it is safe to assume that the above-named persons are unlikely to be objective in assessing the person whom they betrayed and killed.
It was not enough for the Empress and her "accomplices" to overthrow and kill Peter III. To justify their crimes, they had to slander their victim!
And they lied assiduously, piling up vile gossip and filthy inventions.

Ekaterina:

"He spent his time in unheard-of childishness ...". "He was stubborn and quick-tempered, was weak and frail in build."
"From the age of ten, he became addicted to drunkenness." "He mostly showed disbelief ..." "His mind was childish ..."
"He was desperate. This often happened to him. He was cowardly in heart and weak in head. He loved oysters ..."

In her memoirs, the empress portrayed her murdered husband as a drunkard, a revelry, a coward, a fool, a loafer, a tyrant, a feeble-minded, a libertine, an ignoramus, an atheist ...
"What kind of slop is she pouring on her husband just because she killed him!" - exclaims Victor Sosnora.
But, oddly enough, pundits who have written dozens of volumes of dissertations and monographs have not doubted the veracity of the murderers' recollections of their victim. Until now, in all textbooks and encyclopedias, one can read about the "insignificant" emperor who "nullified the results of Russian victories" in the Seven Years' War, and then "drank with the Holsteins in Oranienbaum."
Lies have long legs ...

In preparing this article
used the work of Viktor Sosnora

"SAVIOR OF THE FATHERLAND"
from the collection "Rulers and Fates.
Literary options historical events"(L., 1986)

(née Karl Peter Ulrich Holstein-Gottorp)

Lived: 1728-1762
Russian emperor in 1761-1762

The first representative of the Holstein-Gottorp (Oldenburg) branch of the Romanovs on the Russian throne. Sovereign Duke of Holstein (since 1745).

Grandson, son of Tsarevna Anna Petrovna and Duke of Holstein-Gottorp Karl Friedrich. On his father's side, he was the great-nephew of the Swedish king Charles XII and was initially raised as the heir to the Swedish throne.

Biography of Peter III

Born on February 10 (21), 1728 in the Duchy of Holstein (northern Germany). His mother died 1 week after his birth, and in 1739 he lost his father as well. The child grew up as a fearful, nervous, impressionable boy, loved painting and music, but at the same time adored everything military (while he was afraid of cannon fire). By nature, the boy was not evil. He was not given a good education, but they were often subjected to punishments (flogging, standing on peas). As the likely heir to the Swedish throne, he was raised in the Lutheran faith and in hatred of Russia, Sweden's longtime enemy.

But when his aunt ascended to the Russian throne, the boy was brought to St. Petersburg in early February 1742 and on November 15 (26), 1742 was declared her heir. Soon he converted to Orthodoxy and received the name of Peter Fedorovich.

In May 1745 he was proclaimed the ruling duke of Holstein. In August 1745
Mr .. married Princess Sophia Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future. The marriage turned out to be unsuccessful, at first there were no children, only in 1754 they had a son, Pavel, and in 1756, a daughter, Anna, whose paternity was the subject of rumors. Immediately after birth, the infant heir Pavel was taken away from his parents; Empress Elizabeth Petrovna herself was involved in his upbringing. But Pyotr Fedorovich was never interested in his son.

The future emperor had a relationship with the maid of honor E.R. Vorontsova, the niece of Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov. Catherine felt humiliated. In 1756 she had an affair with Stanislaw August Poniatowski, a Polish envoy to the Russian court. There is information that Peter the Third and his wife often had joint dinners with Poniatovsky and Elizaveta Vorontsova.

In the early 1750s. Peter 3 allowed to write out a small detachment of Holstein soldiers and all his free time was engaged in military exercises and maneuvers with them. He was also very fond of playing the violin.

During the years spent in Russia, Pyotr Fedorovich never tried to get to know the country, its people, history better, neglected Russian customs, behaved in an inappropriate manner during church services. Elizaveta Petrovna did not allow him to participate in solving political issues and gave him the post of director of the gentry corps. She forgave him a lot as the son of her beloved sister who died early.

As an admirer of Frederick the Great, Pyotr Fedorovich publicly expressed during the Seven Years' War of 1756–1763. their pro-Russian sympathies. His open dislike for everything Russian caused concern in Elizabeth, and she created a project for the transfer of the crown to young Paul under the regency of Catherine or Catherine herself. But she did not dare to change the order of succession.

After Elizabeth's death on December 25, 1761 (January 5, 1762), Peter III freely ascended the Russian throne.

Emperor Peter III

In assessing his performance, 2 different approaches usually clash. The traditional approach is based on absolutizing his vices, accentuating his dislike for Russia. And the second approach looks at the positive outcomes of his rule.

It is noted that Peter III energetically engaged in state affairs. His policy was quite consistent and progressive.
J.G. Lestok, B.C. Minikh, E.I.Biron and other disgraced leaders of previous reigns were returned from exile.

In domestic policy carried out a number of important reforms - abolished the burdensome salt tax, destroyed the ominous Secret Chancellery (the main body of political investigation), the Manifesto of February 16, 1762, granted the nobility the right to be released from service (decree on February 18 (March 1), 1762).

Among the most important cases are the encouragement of commercial and industrial activities through the creation of the State Bank and the issuance of banknotes (the Decree of May 25), the adoption of the decree on the freedom of foreign trade (the Decree of March 28). It also contains the requirement to respect forests as one of the most important wealth of Russia. Among other measures, researchers note a decree that allowed the organization of factories for the production of sailing linen in Siberia and a decree that qualified the killing of peasants by landowners as "tyrannical torment" and provided for lifelong exile. They also stopped the persecution of the Old Believers.

However, these measures did not bring popularity to the emperor; moreover, the introduction of the Prussian order in the army caused strong irritation in the guards, and the policy of religious tolerance pursued by him, revived the clergy against him.

The reign of Peter III was marked by the strengthening of serfdom.

The legislative activity of the government was extraordinary; during his short reign, 192 documents were adopted.

Politics during the reign of Peter III

In its foreign policy he decisively abandoned the anti-Prussian course of Elizabethan diplomacy. Immediately upon accession to the throne, he stopped the war with Frederick II and entered into a treaty with him on April 24 (May 5), 1762, returning to Prussia all the territories taken from her by Russian troops, and on June 8 (19) entered a military-political coalition with him against the former allies of Russia (France and Austria); Russian army of Field Marshal ZG Chernyshev was ordered to start military operations against the Austrians.

Widespread dissatisfaction with these actions contributed to the beginning of a military coup, which had long been prepared by Catherine's entourage, whose relationship with her husband was on the verge of breaking; the emperor threatened to imprison her in a monastery and marry his favorite E.R. Vorontsova.

On June 28 (July 9), Catherine, with the support of the guards and her fellow conspirators, the three Orlov brothers, officers of the Izmailovsky regiment, the Roslavlev brothers, Passek and Bredikhin, seized the capital and proclaimed herself an autocratic empress. Among the highest dignitaries of the Empire, the most active conspirators were N.I. Panin, educator of the young Pavel Petrovich, M.N. Volkonsky and K.G. Razumovsky, Little Russian hetman, president of the Academy of Sciences, favorite of his Izmailovsky regiment.

End of the reign of Peter III

In the evening of the same day, the future empress moved with troops to Oranienbaum, where her husband was. Upon learning of this, he made an unsuccessful attempt to occupy Kronstadt. On June 29 (July 10), he returned to Oranienbaum and proposed to Catherine to share power, but when he was refused, he was forced to abdicate. On the same day he left for Peterhof, where he was arrested and sent to Ropsha.

However, on July 6 (17), having lived in Ropsha for less than a week under the supervision of A.F. Orlov, he died under unexplained circumstances. The government announced that he had died of an attack of hemorrhoids. An autopsy revealed that the former emperor had severe heart dysfunction, intestinal inflammation, and signs of apoplexy. However, the widespread version calls the murderer Alexei Orlov, the illegitimate son of Catherine, from Grigory Orlov.

Modern research shows that stroke could be a possible cause of death.

Catherine II, from a political point of view, was unprofitable for her husband's death, because with the full support of the guard, her power was unlimited. Having learned about the death of her husband, she said: “My glory is lost! The offspring will never forgive me for this involuntary crime. "

Initially, the former emperor was buried without any honors in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, since only crowned persons were buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The full Senate asked the Empress not to attend the funeral, but she secretly said goodbye to her husband.

In 1796, immediately after the death of Catherine, by order of Paul I, the remains of her ex-husband were first transferred to home church The Winter Palace, and then to the Peter and Paul Cathedral. He was reburied simultaneously with the burial of Catherine II; Emperor Paul himself personally performed the ceremony of crowning the ashes of his father.

During the reign of Catherine, many impostors impersonated her husband (about 40 cases were recorded), the most famous of which was Emelyan Pugachev.

Pyotr Fedorovich was married once. Wife: Ekaterina Alekseevna (Sofia Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst). Children: Pavel, Anna.

During her lifetime in 1742, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna declared her nephew, the son of Anna Petrovna's late elder sister, Karl-Peter-Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gotorp, to be the legal heir to the Russian throne. He was also a Swedish prince, as he was the grandson of Queen Ulrike-Eleanor, who inherited the power of Charles XII, who had no children. Therefore, the boy was brought up in the Lutheran faith, and his mentor was the military marshal Count Otto Brumenn to the marrow of his bones. But according to the peace treaty signed in the city of Abo in 1743 after the actual defeat of Sweden in the war with Russia, Ulrika-Eleanor was forced from plans to crown her grandson to the throne, and the young duke moved to St. Petersburg from Stockholm.

After the adoption of Orthodoxy, he received the name of Peter Fedorovich. His new teacher was Jacob von Stehlin, who considered his student a gifted young man. He clearly excelled in history, mathematics, if it concerned fortification and artillery and music. However, Elizaveta Petrovna was dissatisfied with his successes, since he did not want to study the basics of Orthodoxy and Russian literature. After the birth of Pavel Petrovich's grandson on September 20, 1754, the Empress began to draw the clever and decisive Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna closer to her, and the stubborn nephew "for fun" was allowed to create a Holstein Guards Regiment in Oranienbaum. Without a doubt, she wanted to proclaim Paul the heir to the throne, and to proclaim Catherine regent until he came of age. This further worsened the relationship between the spouses.

After the sudden death of Elizabeth Petrovna on January 5, 1762, Grand Duke Peter III Fedorovich officially married to the kingdom. However, he did not stop those timid economic and administrative transformations that the late empress began, although he never felt personal sympathy for her. Quiet, cozy Stockholm, presumably, remained a paradise for him in comparison with the crowded and unfinished Petersburg.

By this time, a difficult internal political situation had developed in Russia.

In the Code of 1754, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna spoke of the monopoly right of nobles to own land and serfs. The landowners only did not have the opportunity to take their lives, punish them with a whip for cattle and torture them. The nobles received the unlimited right to buy and sell peasants. In Elizabethan times, the main form of protest of serfs, schismatics and sectarians was the mass escapes of peasants and townspeople. Hundreds of thousands fled not only to the Don and Siberia, but also to Poland, Finland, Sweden, Persia, Khiva and other countries. There were other signs of the crisis - the country was flooded with "gangs of robberies". The reign of "Petrova's daughter" was not only a period of flourishing of literature and art, the appearance of the noble intelligentsia, but at the same time when the Russian tax-paying population felt an increase in the degree of their lack of freedom, human humiliation, and powerlessness against social injustice.

“Development stopped before its growth; in the years of courage, he remained the same as he was in childhood, grew up without maturing, - wrote about the new emperor V.O. Klyuchevsky. "He was a grown man, forever remaining a child." The outstanding Russian historian, like other domestic and foreign researchers, awarded Peter III with many negative qualities and offensive epithets with which one can argue. Of all the preceding sovereigns and sovereigns, perhaps only he lasted on the throne for 186 days, although he was distinguished by independence in making political decisions. The negative characterization of Peter III goes back to the times of Catherine II, who made every effort to defame her husband in every possible way and inspire her subjects with the idea of ​​what a great feat she accomplished in saving Russia from the tyrant. “More than 30 years have passed since the sad memory of Peter III descended into the grave,” N.M. wrote with bitterness. Karamzin in 1797 - and deceived Europe all this time judged this sovereign from the words of his mortal enemies or their vile supporters. "

The new emperor was short, with a disproportionately small head, and snub-nosed. He was disliked immediately because after the grandiose victories over the best Prussian army of Frederick II the Great in the Seven Years' War and the capture of Berlin by Count Chernyshev, Peter III signed a humiliating - from the point of view of the Russian nobility - peace that returned to the defeated Prussia all the conquered territories without any preconditions ... It was said that he even stood under the gun "on guard" for two hours in the January frost as a sign of apology in front of the empty building of the Prussian embassy. Duke Georg Holstein-Gottorp was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army. When the Emperor's favorite Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova asked him about this strange act: “What is it to you, Petrusha, was this Frederick given - after all, we hit him in the tail and mane?”, He sincerely replied that “I love Frederick because I love everyone! " However, most of all, Peter III valued reasonable order and discipline, considering the order established in Prussia as a model. Imitating Frederick the Great, who perfectly played the flute, the emperor diligently studied the violin skill!

However, Pyotr Fedorovich hoped that the king of Prussia would support him in the war with Denmark in order to regain Holstein, and even sent 16,000 soldiers and officers under the command of cavalry general Pyotr Aleksandrovich Rumyantsev to Braunschweig. However, the Prussian army was in such a deplorable state that Frederick the Great did not dare to involve it in a new war. And Rumyantsev was far from happy to have the Prussians beaten by him many times as allies!

Lomonosov reacted this way in his pamphlet on the accession of Peter III:

"Has anyone heard of those born into the world,

So that the triumphant people

Surrendered into the hands of the vanquished?

Oh, shame! Oh, strange turn! "

Frederick II the Great, in turn, conferred on the emperor the rank of colonel of the Prussian army, which further outraged the Russian officers, who defeated the previously invincible Prussians both at Gross-Jägersdorf, and at Zorndorf, and at Kunersdorf and captured Berlin in 1760. As a result of the bloody Seven Years War, Russian officers received nothing but invaluable military experience, well-deserved authority, military ranks and orders.

And frankly and without hiding it, Peter III did not love his "skinny and stupid" wife Sophia-Frederica-Augusta, Princess von Anhalt-Zerbst, in Orthodoxy, Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna. Her father Christian Augustine was in active Prussian service and was the governor of the city of Stettin, and her mother Johann Elizabeth came from an old noble family of Holstein-Gottorp. The Grand Duke and his wife turned out to be distant relatives, and even were similar in character. Both were distinguished by a rare determination, fearlessness, bordering on insanity, unlimited ambition and exorbitant vanity. Both husband and wife considered monarchical power to be their natural right, and their own decisions - the law for their subjects.

And although Ekaterina Alekseevna presented the son of Pavel Petrovich to the heir to the throne, the relationship between the spouses always remained cool. Despite the court gossip about the countless adultery of his wife, Paul was very much like his father. But this, nevertheless, only alienated the spouses from each other. Surrounded by the emperor, the Holstein aristocrats invited by him - Prince Holstein-Beck, Duke Ludwig Holstein and Baron Ungern - willingly gossiped about Catherine's love affairs with Prince Saltykov (according to rumors Pavel Petrovich was his son), then with Prince Ponyatovsky, then with Count Chernyshev, then with Count Grigory Orlov.

The emperor was irritated by the desire of Catherine to become Russified, to comprehend the Orthodox religious sacraments, to learn the traditions and customs of future Russian subjects, which Peter III considered pagan. He used to say that, like Peter the Great, he would divorce his wife and become the spouse of the chancellor's daughter, Elizaveta Mikhailovna Vorontsova.

Catherine paid him in full return. The reason for the desired divorce from his unloved wife was the “letters” fabricated in Versailles from Grand Duchess Catherine to Field Marshal Apraksin that after the victory over the Prussian troops at Memel in 1757, he should not enter East Prussia in order to enable Frederick the Great to recover from defeat. On the contrary, when the French ambassador to Warsaw demanded that Elizabeth Petrovna remove the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanislav-August Poniatovsky from St. Petersburg, hinting at his love affair with the Grand Duchess, Catherine frankly declared to the empress: Russian empress and how dare he prescribe his will to the mistress of the strongest European power? "

Chancellor Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov did not need to prove the falsity of these papers, but, nevertheless, in a private conversation with the St. Petersburg Chief of Police Nikolai Alekseevich Korf, Peter III expressed his innermost thoughts: “I will tonsure my wife as a nun, as did my grandfather, the great Peter, with his first wife - let him pray and repent! And I will put them with my son in Shlisselburg ... ". Vorontsov decided not to rush things to slander the emperor's wife.

However, his catchphrase about "universal Christian love" and the performance of Mozart's works on the violin at a very decent level, with which Peter III wanted to enter Russian history, did not add to his popularity among the Russian nobility. In fact, brought up in a strict German atmosphere, he was disappointed with the customs that reigned at the court of his compassionate aunt with her favorites, ministerial leapfrog, eternal ballroom ceremonies and military parades in honor of Peter's victories. Peter III, having converted to Orthodoxy, did not like to attend church services in churches, especially on Easter, make pilgrimages to holy places and monasteries, and observe obligatory religious fasts. Russian noblemen believed that at heart he always remained a Lutheran, if not even a "freethinker in the French manner."

The Grand Duke at one time laughed heartily at the rescript of Elizabeth Petrovna, according to which "the valet, who is on duty at Her Majesty's door at night, must listen and, when Mother Empress cries out from a nightmare dream, put his hand on her forehead and say" white swan " , for which this valet complains to the nobility and receives the surname Lebedev. " As she grew older, Elizaveta Petrovna constantly saw in a dream the same scene as she lifts the deposed Anna Leopoldovna, who by that time had long been reposed in Kholmogory, out of bed. It didn't help that she changed her bedroom almost every night. There were more and more noblemen Lebedevs. For simplicity, distinguishing them from the peasant class, they began to be called after the next certification in the reign of Alexander II by the landowners Lebedinsky.

In addition to "universal kindness" and the violin, Peter III adored subordination, order and justice. Under him, nobles disgraced under Elizabeth Petrovna were returned from exile - Duke Biron, Count Minich, Count Lestok and Baroness Mengden and restored to their rank and condition. This was perceived as the threshold of a new "Bironovism"; the image of a new foreign favorite simply did not yet emerge. Lieutenant-General Count Ivan Vasilyevich Gudovich, military to the bone, was clearly not suitable for this role, the toothless and idiotically smiling Minich and the forever frightened Biron, of course, were not taken into account by anyone.

The very sight of Petersburg, where among the dugouts and "chicken huts" of state serfs and townspeople assigned to the settlement, towered the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Winter Palace and the house of the Governor-General of the capital Menshikov, with littered dirty streets, disgusted the emperor. However, Moscow did not look better, standing out only for its numerous cathedrals, churches and monasteries. Moreover, Peter the Great himself forbade building up Moscow with brick buildings and paving streets with stones. Peter III wanted to improve the appearance of his capital - "Venice of the North" a little.

And he, together with the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, Prince Cherkassky, gave the order to clear the cluttered construction site in front of the Winter Palace for many years, through which the courtiers made their way to the front entrance, as if through the ruins of Pompeii, tearing their camisoles and dirtying their boots. Petersburgers dismantled all the rubble in half an hour, taking for themselves broken bricks, and trimmings of rafters, and rusty nails, and remnants of glass and fragments of scaffolding. The square was soon perfectly paved by Danish craftsmen and became a decoration of the capital. The city began to rebuild little by little, for which the townspeople were extremely grateful to Peter III. The same fate befell construction dumps in Peterhof, Oranienbaum, at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and on Strelna. Russian nobles saw this as a bad sign - they did not like foreign orders and were afraid since the time of Anna Ioannovna. The new city quarters beyond the Moika River, where commoners opened “tenement houses,” sometimes looked better than the township's wooden huts, as if transferred from the boyar Moscow past.

The emperor was also disliked for adhering to a strict daily routine. Rising at six o'clock in the morning, Peter III raised the alarm of the commanders of the guards regiments, and arranged military reviews with obligatory exercises in shagistics, shooting and combat rebuilding. The Russian guards hated discipline and military exercises with every fiber of their soul, considering free order as their privilege, sometimes appearing in the regiments in domestic dressing gowns and even in nightgowns, but with the authorized sword at the waist! The last straw was the introduction military uniform Prussian model. Instead of the Russian dark green army uniform with red standing collars and cuffs, uniforms of orange, blue, orange and even canary colors should be worn. Wigs, aiguillettes and espantons became mandatory, because of which the "Transfiguration", "Semyonovtsy" and "Izmailovtsy" became almost indistinguishable, and narrow boots, in the tops of which, as in old times, flat German vodka flasks did not fit. In a conversation with his close friends, the Razumovsky brothers, Alexei and Kirill, Peter III said that the Russian "guard is the current janissaries, and it should be eliminated!"

There were enough reasons for the palace conspiracy in the guard. Being not a stupid person, Peter III understood that it was dangerous to trust the "Russian Praetorians" with his life. And he decided to create his own personal guard - the Holstein regiment under the command of General Gudovich, but managed to form only one battalion of 1,590 people. After the strange end by Russia of its participation in the Seven Years' War, the Holstein-Gothorp and Danish nobles were in no hurry to go to St. Petersburg, which clearly sought to pursue an isolationist policy that did not promise any benefits to the professional military. Desperate rascals, drunkards and people of dubious reputation were recruited into the Holstein battalion. Yes, and the emperor's peacefulness alarmed the mercenaries - a double salary for Russian servicemen was paid only during the period of hostilities. Peter III was not going to retreat from this rule, especially since the state treasury was thoroughly devastated during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna.

Chancellor Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov and actual privy councilor and at the same time life secretary Dmitry Ivanovich Volkov, seeing the liberal moods of the emperor, immediately began to prepare the highest manifestos, which Peter III, unlike Anna Leopoldovna and Elizabeth Petrovna, not only signed, but also read. He personally corrected the text of the draft documents, inserting his own rational critical judgments into them.

So, according to his Decree of February 21, the ominous Secret Chancellery was liquidated, and its archive "to eternal oblivion" was transferred to the Governing Senate for permanent storage. Fatal for any Russian submitted formula "Word and deed!", Which was enough to "test on the rack" everyone, regardless of their class affiliation; it was forbidden even to pronounce it.

In his programmatic "Manifesto on the Liberty and Freedom of the Russian Nobility" dated February 18, 1762, Peter III abolished the physical torture of representatives of the ruling class altogether and provided them with guarantees of personal inviolability, if this did not concern treason to the Fatherland. Even such a "humane" execution for the nobles as cutting off the language and exile to Siberia instead of cutting off the head, introduced by Elizaveta Petrovna, were prohibited. His decrees confirmed and expanded the noble monopoly on distilling.

The Russian nobility was shocked by the public trial of General Maria Zotova, whose estates were sold at auction in favor of disabled soldiers and crippled peasants for inhuman treatment of serfs. The Prosecutor General of the Senate, Count Alexei Ivanovich Glebov, was ordered to start an investigation into the case of many noble fanatics. In this regard, the emperor issued a separate decree, the first in Russian legislation, qualifying the killing of their peasants by landowners as "tyrannical torment", for which such landowners were punished by life in exile.

From now on, it was forbidden to punish the peasants with batogs, which often led to their death - "for this, use only rods, with which to whip only in soft places, in order to prevent self-harm."

All fugitive peasants, sectarians-Nekrasovites and deserters, who fled in tens of thousands, mostly to the border river Yaik, beyond the Urals, and even to the distant Rzeczpospolita and Khiva during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, were amnestied. By the Decree of January 29, 1762, they received the right to return to Russia not to their former owners and to the barracks, but as state serfs or were granted Cossack dignity in the Yaitsk Cossack army. It was here that the most explosive human material accumulated, henceforth passionately devoted to Peter III. The old believers-schismatics were exempt from the tax for dissent and could now live by their own way. Finally, all debts accumulated from the Cathedral Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich were written off from private serfs. There was no limit to the popular jubilation: prayers were offered up to the emperor in all rural parishes, regimental chapels and schismatic sketes.

The merchants turned out to be well-groomed too. By a decree of the emperor, duty-free export of agricultural goods and raw materials to Europe was allowed, which significantly strengthened the country's monetary system. To support foreign trade, the State Bank was created with a credit capital of five million silver rubles. Merchants of all three guilds could get a long-term loan.

Peter III decided to complete the secularization of church land holdings, begun shortly before his death by Peter the Great, by decree of March 21, 1762, limiting the immovable property of all rural parishes and monasteries to their fences and walls, leaving them the territory of cemeteries, and was also going to prohibit the clergy from owning serfs and artisans. Church hierarchs greeted these measures with open discontent, and joined the noble opposition.

This led to the fact that between the parish priests, who were always closer to the masses, and the provincial nobles, who held back government measures that somehow improved the position of peasants and working people, and the "white clergy", who constituted stable opposition to the growing absolutism since Patriarch Nikon, an abyss has passed. The Russian Orthodox Church was no longer a single force, and the society was split. Having become Empress, Catherine II canceled these decrees, which made the Most Holy Synod obedient to her authority.

The decrees of Peter III on the all-round encouragement of commercial and industrial activities were supposed to streamline monetary relations in the empire. His "Decree on Commerce", which included protectionist measures for the development of grain exports, contained specific instructions on the need for a careful attitude of energetic nobles and merchants to the forest, as to the national wealth of the Russian Empire.

What other liberal plans swarmed in the head of the emperor, no one will be able to find out ...

By a special resolution of the Senate, it was decided to erect a gilded statue of Peter III, but he himself opposed this. A flurry of liberal decrees and manifestos shook noble Russia to its foundations, and touched patriarchal Russia, which had not yet completely parted with the remnants of pagan idolatry.

On June 28, 1762, a day before his own birthday, Peter III, accompanied by a Holstein battalion, together with Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova, left for Oranienbaum to prepare everything for the celebration. Catherine was left unattended in Peterhof. Early in the morning, having missed the solemn train of the emperor, the carriage with sergeant of the Preobrazhensky regiment, Alexei Grigorievich Orlov and Count Alexander Ilyich Bibikov, turned to Moplezir, took Catherine and galloped off to Petersburg. Everything was already prepared here. The money for organizing the palace coup was again borrowed from the French ambassador, Baron de Breteuil, - King Louis XV wanted Russia to start military operations again against Prussia and England, which was promised by Count Panin in the event of the successful overthrow of Peter III. The Grand Duchess Catherine, as a rule, kept silent when Panin colorfully described to her the appearance of "new Europe" under the auspices of the Russian Empire.

Four hundred "Transfiguration", "Izmailovo" and "Semenovites", pretty much warmed up by vodka and unrealizable hopes to eradicate everything foreign, greeted the former German princess as an Orthodox Russian empress as "mother"! In the Kazan Cathedral, Catherine II read out the Manifesto on her own accession, written by Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin, where it was reported that due to the severe mental disorder of Peter III, reflected in his frantic republican aspirations, she was forced to take state power into her own hands. The Manifesto hinted that after the age of majority of her son Paul, she would resign. Catherine managed to read this point so indistinctly that no one in the jubilant crowd really heard anything. As always, the troops willingly and cheerfully swore allegiance to the new empress and rushed to the barrels of beer and vodka previously placed in the gateways. Only the Horse Guards regiment tried to break through to the Nevsky, but on the bridges tightly wheel to wheel were placed cannons under the command of the tsalmeister (lieutenant) of the guards artillery and lover of the new empress Grigory Grigorievich Orlov, who vowed to lose his life, but not to allow the coronation to be disrupted. It was impossible to break through the artillery positions without the help of the infantry, and the horse guards retreated. For his feat in the name of his beloved, Orlov received the title of count, the rank of senator and the rank of adjutant general.

In the evening of the same day, 20,000 cavalry and infantry, led by Empress Catherine II, dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the Preobrazhensky regiment, moved to Oranienbaum to overthrow the legitimate descendant of the Romanovs. Peter III simply had nothing to defend against this huge army. He had to silently sign the act of abdication, haughtily stretched out by his wife from the saddle. On the maid of honor Countess Elizaveta Vorontsova, the Izmailovo soldiers tore her ball gown into shreds, and his goddaughter, the young princess Vorontsova-Dashkova boldly shouted in Peter's face: “So, godfather, do not be rude with your wife!” The deposed emperor sadly replied: "My child, it does not bother you to remember that driving bread and salt with honest fools, like your sister and I, is much safer than with the great wise men who squeeze the juice out of lemon and throw the crusts at your feet."

The next day, Peter III was already under house arrest in Ropsha. He was allowed to live there with his beloved dog, a negro servant and a violin. He only had a week to live. He managed to write to Catherine II two notes with a plea for mercy and a request to let him go to England together with Elizaveta Vorontsova, ending with the words “I hope for your generosity that you will not leave me without food according to the Christian model”, signed “your faithful lackey”.

On Saturday, July 6, Peter III was killed during a card game by his volunteer jailers Alexei Orlov and Prince Fyodor Baryatinsky. Guardsmen Grigory Potemkin and Platon Zubov, who were privy to the conspiracy plans and witnessed the abuse of the disgraced emperor, were constantly on guard, but they were not hindered. Even in the morning Orlov wrote in a drunken and swaying handwriting from insomnia, probably right on the drum of the flag officer, a note to "our All-Russian mother" Catherine II, in which he said that "our freak is very sick, no matter how he died today."

The fate of Pyotr Fedorovich was a foregone conclusion, only a pretext was needed. And Orlov accused Peter of twisting the map, to which he shouted indignantly: "Who are you talking to, slave ?!" The exact one followed terrible force a fork in the throat, and with a wheeze the former emperor fell on his back. Orlov was confused, but the resourceful prince Baryatinsky immediately tightened the dying man's throat with a silk Holstein scarf, so much so that the blood did not drain from his head and was caked under the skin of his face.

Later, the sober Alexei Orlov wrote a detailed report to Catherine II, in which he pleaded guilty to the death of Peter III: “Mother, merciful Empress! How can I explain, describe what happened: you will not believe your faithful slave. But as before God I will tell the truth. Mother! I am ready to go to death, but I myself do not know how this misfortune happened. We died when you will not have mercy. Mother - he is not in the world. But no one thought of this, and how can we plan to raise our hands against the sovereign! But the trouble happened. He argued at the table with Prince Fyodor Boryatinsky; no sooner had we [with sergeant Potemkin] separated them, but he was gone. We ourselves do not remember what we did, but we are all guilty and worthy of execution. Have mercy on me even for my brother. I brought you a blame, and there is nothing to look for. Forgive me or order me to finish soon. The light is not sweet - they angered you and ruined souls forever. "

Catherine shed a "widow's tear" and generously rewarded all the participants in the palace coup, at the same time conferring extraordinary military ranks on the guards officers. Little Russian hetman, field marshal general count Kirill Grigorievich Razumovsky began to receive "in excess of his hetman's income and the salary he received" 5,000 rubles a year and a full state councilor, senator and chief-master, count Nikita Ivanovich Panin - 5,000 rubles a year. The actual chamberlain Grigory Grigorievich Orlov was granted 800 souls of serfs, and the same number of seconds was given to the Major of the Preobrazhensky regiment, Alexei Grigorievich Orlov. The captain-lieutenant of the Preobrazhensky regiment, Peter Passek, and the lieutenant of the Semenovsky regiment, Prince Fyodor Boryatinsky, were awarded 24,000 rubles each. Not deprived of the attention of the empress and the second lieutenant of the Preobrazhensky regiment, Prince Grigory Potemkin, who received 400 souls of serfs, and Prince Pyotr Golitsyn, who received 24,000 rubles from the treasury.

On June 8, 1762, Catherine II publicly announced that Peter III Fedorovich had died: "The former emperor, by the will of God, suddenly died from hemorrhoidal colic and severe pain in the intestines" - which was absolutely incomprehensible to most of those present due to widespread medical illiteracy - and even arranged magnificent " funeral "of a simple wooden coffin, without any decorations, which was placed in the Romanov family crypt. At night, the remains of the slain emperor were secretly placed inside a simple wooden domina.

The real burial took place in Ropsha the day before. The assassination of Emperor Peter III had unusual consequences: because of the throat tightened at the time of death, a scarf lay in a coffin ... a negro! The soldiers of the guard immediately decided that instead of Peter III, they put a "moor", one of the many court buffoons, all the more because they knew that the guard of honor was preparing for the funeral the next day. This rumor spread among the guards, soldiers and Cossacks stationed in St. Petersburg. There was a rumor all over Russia that Tsar Peter Fedorovich, kind to the people, miraculously escaped, and twice they did not bury him, but some commoners or court buffoons. And therefore, more than twenty "miraculous deliverances" of Peter III took place, the largest of which was the Don Cossack, retired cornet Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, who organized a terrible and merciless Russian revolt. Apparently, he knew a lot about the circumstances of the double burial of the emperor and that the Yaik Cossacks and runaway schismatics were ready to support his "resurrection": it was no coincidence that the Old Believers' cross was depicted on the banners of Pugachev's army.

The prophecy of Peter III, expressed to Princess Vorontsova-Dashkova, turned out to be true. In the growing "gratitude" of Catherine II soon had to be convinced of all those who helped her to become empress. Contrary to their opinion, that she would declare herself regent and rule with the help of the Imperial Council, she declared herself empress and was officially crowned on September 22, 1762 in the Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin.

A terrible warning for the likely noble opposition was the restoration of the detective police, which received the new name of the Secret Expedition.

Now a conspiracy was drawn up against the Empress. Decembrist Mikhail Ivanovich Fonvizin left an interesting note: “In 1773 ... when the Tsarevich came of age and married a princess of Darmstadt named Natalia Alekseevna, Count N.I. Panin, his brother Field Marshal P.I. Panin, Princess E.R. Dashkova, Prince N.V. Repnin, one of the bishops, almost Metropolitan Gabriel, and many of the then nobles and guards officers entered into a conspiracy to overthrow Catherine II, who reigned without [legal] right [to the throne], and instead raise her adult son. Pavel Petrovich knew about this, agreed to accept the constitution proposed to him by Panin, approved it with his signature and took the oath that, having reigned, he would not violate this fundamental state law limiting autocracy. "

The peculiarity of all Russian conspiracies was that the oppositionists, who did not have the same experience as their Western European associates, constantly sought to expand the limits of their narrow circle. And if the matter concerned the higher clergy, then their plans became known even to the parish priests, who in Russia had to immediately explain to the commoners the changes in the policy of the state. The appearance of Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev in 1773 cannot be considered an accident or a mere coincidence: he could learn about the plans of the high-ranking conspirators from this very source and in his own way use the oppositional moods of the nobility against the empress in the capital, fearlessly moving towards the regular regiments of the imperial army in the Ural steppes, defeating them defeat after defeat.

It was not for nothing that Pugachev, like them, constantly appealed to the name of Paul as the future successor of the "father's" cause and the overthrow of the hated mother. Catherine II learned about the preparations for the coup, which coincided with the "Pugachevism", and spent almost a year in the admiral's cabin of her yacht "Shtandart", which constantly stood at the Vasilievskaya arrow under the protection of two newest battleships with loyal crews. In difficult times, she was ready to sail to Sweden or England.

After the public execution of Pugachev in Moscow, all high-ranking St. Petersburg conspirators were sent into honorary retirement. The overly energetic Ekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova went to her own estate for a long time, Count Panin, formally remaining President of the Foreign College, was actually removed from public affairs, and Grigory Grigorievich Orlov, allegedly secretly married to the Empress, was no longer allowed to attend an audience with Catherine II, and later exiled to his own fiefdom. General-Admiral Count Alexei Grigorievich Orlov-Chesmensky, the hero of the first Russian-Turkish war, was relieved of his post as commander of the Russian fleet and sent to diplomatic service abroad.

The long and unsuccessful siege of Orenburg also had its reasons. Infantry general Leonty Leontyevich Bennigsen later testified: “When the empress lived in Tsarskoe Selo during the summer season, Pavel usually lived in Gatchina, where he had a large detachment of troops. He surrounded himself with guards and pickets; patrols constantly guarded the road to Tsarskoe Selo, especially at night, in order to prevent any unexpected enterprise. He even determined in advance the route along which he would withdraw with troops if necessary; the roads along this route have been examined by trusted officers. This route led to the land of the Ural Cossacks, from where the famous rebel Pugachev appeared, who in ... 1773 managed to make himself a significant party, first among the Cossacks themselves, assuring them that he was Peter III, who escaped from the prison where he was kept, falsely announcing his death. Pavel hoped very much for the kind welcome and loyalty of these Cossacks ... But he wanted to make Orenburg the capital. " Paul probably got this idea from conversations with his father, whom he loved very much in infancy. It is no coincidence that one of the first little-explained - from the point of view of common sense - actions of Emperor Paul I was the solemn act of the secondary "wedding" of two august dead in their graves - Catherine II and Peter III!

Thus, palace coups in the "unfinished temple of Peter the Great" created a permanent basis for imposture, which pursued the interests of both noble Russia and serf Orthodox Russia, and took place almost simultaneously. It just so happened since the Time of Troubles.

Peter III Fedorovich (nee Karl Peter Ulrich, born on February 10 (21), 1728 - death on July 6 (17), 1762) - the Russian emperor in 1762. The grandson of Peter I is the son of his daughter Anna.

Origin

Peter III's mother, Anna Petrovna, died of consumption two months after his birth in the small Holstein town of Kiel. She was overwhelmed by the life there and the unhappy family life. Peter's father, Duke of Holstein Karl Friedrich, nephew of the Swedish king Charles XII, was a weak sovereign, poor, ugly, small in stature and weak build. He died in 1739, and his cousin, the Duke of Holstein and the Bishop of Lubeck, Adolf Friedrich, took custody of his son, who was at that time about 11 years old, who later came to the Swedish throne. Peter was naturally weak, frail and nondescript-looking child.

Childhood, youth, education

The main educators were the court marshal Brummer and the chief chamberlain Berchholz. None of them were suitable for this role. According to the testimony of the Frenchman Millet, Brummer was only fit for "raising horses, not princes." He treated his pupil extremely rudely, subjecting him to humiliating and painful punishments, forced him to kneel on peas scattered on the floor, left him without dinner, and even subjected him to beatings.

Humiliated and shy in everything, the prince adopted bad tastes and habits, became irritable, absurd, stubborn and fake, acquired a sad tendency to lie, believing in his own fiction with innocent enthusiasm. At the same time, Peter remained puny and unattractive, both physically and morally. He possessed a strange, restless soul, trapped in a narrow, anemic, prematurely emaciated body. Even in childhood, he discovered a tendency to drunkenness, which is why the teachers were forced to closely monitor him at all receptions.

Heir to the throne

Initially, the prince was prepared for accession to the Swedish throne, while forcing him to learn the Lutheran catechism, Swedish and Latin grammar. However, having become the Russian empress and wanting to secure the inheritance through her father, she sent Major Korf with instructions to take her nephew from Kiel at any cost and bring him to Petersburg.

Arrival in Russia

Peter arrived in the Russian capital on February 5, 1742 and was soon declared Grand Duke and heir to the Russian throne. After communicating with her nephew, Elizabeth was amazed at his ignorance and ordered to immediately start teaching. This good intention was of little use. From the very beginning, the teacher of the Russian language Veselovsky rarely appeared, and then, convinced of the complete inability of his ward, he completely stopped walking. Professor Stehlin, who was tasked with teaching the heir to mathematics and history, showed great perseverance. And soon he realized that the Grand Duke "does not like deep reflection."

Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich

He brought books with pictures, ancient Russian coins to lessons and told about them ancient history Russia. With medals, Stehlin spoke about the history of his reign. Reading the newspapers to him, he went through universal history.

However, it was much more important for the empress to introduce her nephew to Orthodoxy. On this side, we also met with considerable difficulties, because from childhood Peter learned the rules of the strictest and least tolerant Lutheranism. In the end, after many troubles for himself, he obeyed the will of the empress, but at the same time he said several times that it would be more pleasant for him to leave for Sweden than to stay in Russia.

One occupation to which the prince indulged himself with selfless perseverance was playing with soldiers. He ordered to make himself many different soldiers: wax, lead and wood, and arranged them in his office on tables with such devices that if you pull the laces stretched along the tables, sounds like a runaway rifle fire were heard. On regular days, Peter gathered his courtyard, put on a general's uniform and performed a ceremonial review of his toy troops, pulling the laces and listening with pleasure to the battle sounds. The Grand Duke kept his love for these childish games for a long time, even after his marriage to Catherine.

Catherine about Peter

From Catherine's notes it is known what kind of fun he liked to indulge in soon after the wedding. In the village, he made himself a doghouse and began to train the dogs himself.

“With amazing patience,” wrote Ekaterina, “he trained several dogs, punishing them with stick strikes, shouting hunting terms and walking from one end of his two rooms to the other. As soon as a dog got tired or ran away, he subjected her to severe torture, which made her howl even louder. When these exercises, unbearable for the ears and the calmness of his neighbors, eventually bored him, he took up the violin. Peter did not know the notes, but he had a strong ear and believed that the main advantage of playing was to move the bow harder and to make the sounds as loud as possible. His playing tore his ears, and often the listeners had to regret that they did not dare to plug their ears.

Then the dogs were trained and tortured again, which truly seemed to me extremely cruel. Once I heard a terrible, incessant squeal. My bedroom, where I sat, was near the room where the dog training took place. I opened the door and saw how the Grand Duke lifted one of the dogs by the collar, ordered the Kalmyk boy to hold her by the tail and beat the poor animal with a thick stick of his whip with all his might. I began to ask him to spare the unfortunate dog, but instead he began to beat her even harder. I went to my room with tears in my eyes, unable to endure such a cruel sight. In general, tears and screams, instead of arousing pity in the Grand Duke, only made him angry. Pity was a painful and, one might say, intolerable feeling for his soul ... "

Through Madame Cruz, Peter got himself dolls and children's trinkets, to which he was a passionate hunter. “During the day, he hid them from everyone under my bed,” Ekaterina recalled. - The Grand Duke immediately after supper went to his bedroom, and as soon as we were in bed, Madame Cruz locked the door, and the Grand Duke began to play until one o'clock and until two in the morning. I, along with Madame Cruz, am glad not happy, should have taken part in this pleasant lesson. Sometimes I amused myself with it, but much more often it bored me and even bothered me, because dolls and toys, some very heavy, filled and filled up the whole bed. "

Contemporaries about Peter

Is it any wonder that Catherine gave birth to a child only 9 years after the wedding? Although there were other explanations for this delay. Champeau, in a report drawn up for the Versailles court in 1758, wrote: “The Grand Duke, without suspecting it, was unable to produce children, due to the obstacle removed among the Eastern peoples through circumcision, but he considered incurable. The Grand Duchess, who did not love him and was not imbued with the consciousness of having heirs, was not saddened by this. "

For his part, Caster wrote: “He (the Grand Duke) was so ashamed of the misfortune that struck him that he did not even have the determination to confess it, and the Grand Duchess, who took his caresses with disgust and was at that time as inexperienced as she did not think of either comforting him or encouraging him to seek means to bring him back into her arms. "

Peter III and Catherine II

If you believe the same Champeau, the Grand Duke got rid of his lack with the help of Catherine's lover Sergei Saltykov. It happened like this. Once the whole courtyard was present at a big ball. The Empress, passing by the pregnant Naryshkina, Saltykov's sister-in-law, who was talking to Saltykov, told her that she should have conveyed a little of her virtue to the Grand Duchess. Naryshkina replied that this may not be as difficult to do as it seems. Elizabeth began to question her and thus found out about the physical handicap of the Grand Duke. Saltykov immediately said that he enjoyed Peter's confidence and would try to persuade him to agree to the operation. The Empress not only agreed to this, but made it clear that by doing so he would be of great service. On the same day, Saltykov arranged a dinner, invited all Peter's good friends to it, and in a cheerful moment they all surrounded the Grand Duke and asked him to agree to their requests. The surgeon immediately entered, and in one minute the operation was done and was a great success. Peter was finally able to enter into normal communication with his wife and soon after that she became pregnant.

But if Peter and Catherine united to conceive a child, after his birth they felt absolutely free from marital obligations. Each of them knew about the love interests of the other and treated them with complete indifference. Catherine fell in love with August Poniatowski, and the Grand Duke began courting Countess Elizaveta Vorontsova. The latter soon took complete power over Peter.

Contemporaries amicably expressed bewilderment on this score, because they absolutely could not explain how she could bewitch the Grand Duke. Vorontsova was completely ugly and even more. “Ugly, rude and stupid,” Masson said about her. Another witness put it even more harshly: "She swore like a soldier, mowed, smelled and spat while talking." It was rumored that Vorontsova encouraged all the vices of Peter, got drunk with him, scolded and even beat her lover. By all accounts, this was a wicked and ignorant woman. Nevertheless, Peter did not want anything so much as to marry her, having previously divorced Catherine. But while Elizabeth was alive, one could only dream about it.

Everyone who more or less knew the Grand Duke had no doubt that with his coming to power, Russia's policy would change dramatically. Peter's Prussian affections were generally known, because he did not consider it necessary to hide them (and in general, by his very nature, he could not keep secrets and immediately blurted them out to the first person he met; this vice harmed him more than any other in the future).

Accession to the throne of Peter III

1761, December 25 - Elizabeth died. On the very first night of his accession to the throne, Peter sent messengers to various corps of the Russian army with orders to stop enemy actions. On the same day, the favorite of the new emperor, the brigadier and chamberlain Andrei Gudovich, was sent to the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst with a notice of the accession to the throne of Peter III and took the emperor's letter to Frederick. In it, Peter III proposed to Frederick to renew harmony and friendship. Both were accepted with the greatest gratitude.

Foreign and domestic policy of Peter III

Friedrich immediately sent his adjutant Colonel Golts to Petersburg. On April 24, peace was concluded, while on the most favorable terms for Frederick: the Prussian king returned all his lands occupied by Russian troops in former war; a separate paragraph proclaimed the desire of both sovereigns to conclude a military alliance, which was obviously directed against Austria, Russia's former ally.

Elizaveta Vorontsova

Peter behaved in the same radical way in domestic politics. On February 18, a manifesto on the liberty of the nobility was promulgated. From now on, all nobles, no matter what service they were in, military or civil, could continue it or retire. Prince Peter Dolgorukov tells an anecdote about how this famous manifesto was written. One evening, when Peter wanted to cheat on his mistress, he called State Secretary Dmitry Volkov to his place and turned to him with these words: “I told Vorontsova that I would work with you for part of the night on a law of extreme importance. That is why I need a decree tomorrow, which would be discussed at court and in the city. " After that, Volkov was locked in an empty room with a Danish dog. The unhappy secretary did not know what to write about; In the end, I remembered what Count Roman Larionovich Vorontsov often told the sovereign about — namely, the liberty of the nobility. Volkov wrote a manifesto, which was approved the next day by the sovereign.

On February 21, a very important manifesto is issued, abolishing the Secret Chancellery, an agency known for its many abuses and obvious atrocities. On March 21, a decree appears on the secularization of church holdings. According to him, monasteries were deprived of their numerous land holdings, and monks and priests were given fixed state salaries.

Meanwhile, Goltz, who even after the signing of the peace continued to remain in St. Petersburg and had a great influence on the sovereign in all matters, anxiously informed Frederick about the growing discontent against the emperor. Bolotov wrote about the same in his notes. Mentioning some of the decrees of the new reign that aroused the pleasure of the Russians, he further writes:

“But then other orders of the emperor that followed aroused strong murmur and indignation in the subjects, and most of all, he intended to completely change our religion, for which he showed special contempt. He summoned the leading (Novgorod) bishop Dmitry Sechenov and ordered him that only icons of the Savior and the Mother of God be left in the churches, and there would be no others, also that the priests shave their beards and wear dresses like foreign pastors. It is impossible to describe how astonished Archbishop Dmitry was at this order. This prudent elder did not know how to proceed with the fulfillment of this unexpected command, and saw clearly that Peter had an intention to change Orthodoxy to Lutheranism. He was forced to declare his will to the sovereign's most noble clergy, and although the matter stopped there for a while, however, it caused great displeasure in all the clergy. "

Palace coup

The displeasure of the troops was added to the displeasure of the clergy. One of the first deeds of the new reign was the dissolution of the Elizabethan life-company, in the place of which they immediately saw a new, Holstein, guard, which enjoyed the clear preference of the sovereign. This aroused murmur and indignation in the Russian guard. As Catherine herself later admitted, she was offered a plan to overthrow Peter III soon after the death of Elizabeth. But she refused to take part in the conspiracy until June 9. On this day, when there was a celebration of peace with the Prussian king, the emperor publicly insulted her at dinner, and in the evening gave the order to arrest her. Uncle Prince George forced the sovereign to cancel this order. Catherine remained at large, but no longer discouraged herself and agreed to accept the help of her volunteers. Chief among them were the Orlov brothers, the guards officers.

The coup was carried out on June 28, 1762 and was crowned with complete success. Upon learning that the guards unanimously supported Catherine, Peter was confused and abdicated the throne without further ado. Panin, who was instructed to transfer the will of his wife to the deposed sovereign, found the unfortunate man in the most miserable state. Peter tried to kiss his hands, begged not to be separated from his mistress. He cried like a guilty and punished child. The favorite threw herself at the feet of Catherine's messenger and also asked that she was allowed not to leave her lover. But they were still separated. Vorontsova was sent to Moscow, and Peter was assigned a house in Ropsha as a temporary stay, "a very secluded area, but very pleasant", according to Ekaterina, and located 30 miles from St. Petersburg. Peter had to live there until the time when a suitable room was prepared for him in the Shlisselburg fortress.

Death

But, as it soon became clear, he did not need these apartments. On the evening of July 6, Catherine was given a note from Orlov, written in an unsteady and hardly sober hand. One could understand only one thing: that day Peter at the table argued with one of the interlocutors; Orlov and others rushed to separate them, but did it so awkwardly that the frail prisoner turned out to be dead. “We didn’t have time to separate, but he was gone; we don’t remember what we did, ”wrote Orlov. Catherine, in her words, was touched and even amazed by this death. But none of those responsible for the murder was punished. Peter's body was brought directly to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and there he was modestly buried next to the former ruler Anna Leopoldovna.

Peter III (short biography)

The biography of Karl-Peter-Ulrich Holstein-Gottorp or Peter III is full of events and sharp turns. He was born on the twenty-first of February 1728 and was left without a mother in early age... At the age of eleven, he lost his father as well. The young man was prepared to rule Sweden, but everything changed when Elizabeth, who became in 1741, declares her nephew Peter III Fedorovich the heir to her throne.

Researchers argue that he was not a great intellectual, but he was quite fluent in Latin and Lutheran catechism (he spoke French a little more). The Empress forced Peter III to learn Russian and the basics of the Orthodox faith. In 1745 he was married to Catherine II, who bore him an heir, Paul the First. In 1761, after the death of Elizabeth Petrovna, Peter was declared the Russian emperor without coronation.

The reign of Peter the Third lasted one hundred and eighty-six days. In addition, he was not popular at that time in Russian society, since he openly expressed his positive attitude to Frederick II during the Seven Years War.

With his most important manifesto of February 18, 1762, the ruler Peter the Third abolished the compulsory noble service, the Secret Chancellery, and also allowed the schismatics to return to their homeland. However, even these measures did not bring the tsar people's love. For a short period of his reign, serfdom was strengthened. He also ordered the priests to cut their beards and dress in the manner of Lutheran shepherds.

Not hiding his admiration for the ruler of Prussia (Frederick II), Peter III leads Russia out of the Seven Years War, returning the conquered territories to Prussia. It is not surprising that very soon many in the circle of the king become participants in a conspiracy that was aimed at overthrowing such a ruler. The initiator of this conspiracy was Peter's wife Ekaterina Alekseevna.

These events marked the beginning of the 1762 palace coup in which M. Volkonsky, K. Razumovsky, and G. Orlov took part.

Already in 1762, the Izmailovsky and Semyonovsky regiments swore allegiance to Catherine. It was with them that she went to the Kazan Cathedral, where she was proclaimed empress.

Tsar Peter the Third was exiled to Ropsha, where he died on July 9, 1762.