Peterhof and bring Catherine back to the city. The other brothers were to circulate through the barracks of the Guards, sounding the alarm that the empress’s life was in danger and preparing the regiments to support her. Gregory himself was to go to the barracks of Kyril Razumovsky’s Izmailovsky Guards, which lay at the city’s limits on the western road to Peterhof and Oranienbaum. This unit would be the first Guards regiment Catherine would reach when she was escorted back from Peterhof. Alexis Orlov arrived at the meeting, was told what had happened, and immediately went down to the street and hired an ordinary Petersburg street carriage. In this shabby rig, he set off through the luminous, silvery night on the road to Peterhof, twenty miles away.
The next morning, Friday, June 28, Catherine was asleep in Peter the Great’s small waterside pavilion of Mon Plaisir in the gardens of Peterhof. Built in the Dutch style, this little building sat on a narrow terrace only a few feet above the gently lapping waves of the Gulf of Finland. At five o’clock, the empress was awakened by a maidservant. The next moment Alexis Orlov, arriving from St. Petersburg, quietly entered the room and whispered, “Matushka, Little Mother, wake up! The time has come! You must get up and come with me! Everything is ready for your proclamation!”
Startled, Catherine sat up in bed. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Passek is arrested,” Orlov explained. Wordlessly, the empress arose and put on a simple black dress. Without arranging her hair or powdering her face, she accompanied Orlov out the door and through the gardens to the road where his hired carriage was waiting. Catherine got in, accompanied by her maid and her servant Shkurin, while Orlov sat up on the box next to the driver. They set off to return to the capital, twenty miles away, but the two horses, which had already traveled twenty miles that night, were exhausted. Fortunately, a peasant cart drawn by two farm horses appeared on the road. Persuaded by arguments and coins, the peasant driver agreed to exchange his two fresh farm horses for the tired city horses and, in this rustic style, the empress-to-be proceeded toward her destiny. Halfway to the city, they met Catherine’s hairdresser on his way to Peterhof to prepare her hair for the day. The empress turned him around, saying that she would not need him. Then, nearing the capital, they encountered another carriage, bringing Gregory Orlov and Prince Bariatinsky to meet them. Gregory took Catherine and Alexis into his carriage and drove directly to the barracks of the Izmailovsky Guards.
It was nine in the morning when they reached the barracks courtyard. Gregory Orlov leaped from the carriage and ran to announce Catherine’s arrival. A drummer boy came tumbling out a door, followed by a dozen solders, some half-dressed, others fastening on their sword belts. They pressed around Catherine, kissed her hands, feet, and the hem of her black dress. To a gathering, larger crowd of soldiers, the empress said that her life and that of her son had been threatened by the emperor, but that it was not for her own sake, but for that of her beloved country and their holy Orthodox religion that she was compelled to throw herself on their protection. The response was enthusiastic. Kyril Razumovsky, the regiment’s popular colonel and Catherine’s supporter, arrived, bent his knee before the empress, and kissed her hand. On the spot, the regimental chaplain, holding a cross before him, administered an oath of allegiance to “Catherine II of Russia.” It was the beginning.
The Izmailovskys, with Razumovsky riding at their head with a drawn sword, escorted Catherine to the nearby barracks of the Semyonovsky Guards. The Semyonovskys rushed to meet Catherine and swear allegiance. She decided to enter the city immediately. Preceded by chaplains and other priests and followed by a mass of cheering Guardsmen, she rode to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan on the Nevsky Prospekt. There, flanked by the Orlov brothers and Razumovsky, she stood before the iconostasis (icon screen) while the archbishop of Novgorod solemnly proclaimed her
Surrounded by a cheering crowd, with church bells ringing across the city, the empress walked down the Nevsky Prospect to the Winter Palace. There, an obstacle arose. The senior regiment of the Guards, the Preobrazhensky, had wavered. The majority of the soldiers favored Catherine, but some of the officers, having sworn an oath to defend the emperor, were uncertain. After a debate among themselves, the soldiers buckled on their swords, snatched up their muskets, tore off their tight-fitting Prussian uniforms, and dressed in as many of their old bottle-green jackets as they could find. Then, more like a mob than a military body, they hurried to the Winter Palace, which they found surrounded and guarded by the Izmailovsky and Semyonovsky regiments. The Preobrazhenskys shouted to Catherine, “Matushka, forgive us for coming last. Our officers held us back and, to prove our zeal, we have arrested four of them. We wish the same thing as our brothers.” The empress responded by nodding, smiling, and sending the archbishop of Novgorod to administer the oath of allegiance to the latecomers.
Soon after the empress entered the Winter Palace, an older man and a young boy, still in his nightdress, arrived. It was Panin, holding Paul in his arms. On the palace balcony, Catherine presented her eight-year-old son to the crowd as heir to the throne. At this moment, Panin abandoned his thought that Catherine should act as regent for a boy emperor; Catherine now was God’s anointed, the sovereign autocrat. Soon, another late arrival came on the scene. Princess Dashkova had been at home that morning when she learned that Catherine had returned to the city in triumph. She had started immediately to join her idol, but was forced to abandon her carriage when it was immobilized by the dense crowd on the Nevsky Prospect. Squirming and elbowing, she made her way through the mass of bodies in Palace Square. In the palace itself, she was recognized by members of her husband’s regiment, who lifted her small figure above their heads, and passed her, hand over hand, up Rastelli’s magnificent white marble staircase. She landed at Catherine’s feet, crying, “Heaven be praised.”
In the palace, members of the Senate and the Holy Synod waited to greet the new empress and listen to her first imperial manifesto. It declared that Catherine, moved by the perils threatening Russia and the Orthodox religion, eager to rescue Russia from a shameful dependence on foreign powers, and sustained by divine providence, had yielded to the clear wishes of her faithful subjects that she should ascend the throne.
By early evening Catherine was in a commanding position in the capital. She was sure of the Guards, the Senate, the Holy Synod, and the crowds in the street. Calm prevailed in the city and no blood had been shed. But, as she knew, if she was mistress of St. Petersburg, acclaimed by the regiments there and by the political leaders and the leaders of the church, Peter was unaware of this. He still believed he was emperor. Possibly he still possessed the allegiance of the army in Germany and the fleet at Kronstadt. The Holstein soldiers at Oranienbaum would certainly support their master. To confirm her victory, Catherine must locate Peter and persuade him to abdicate, the Holsteiners must be disarmed, and the fleet and all Russian soldiers near the capital must be persuaded to join her. The key to success was Peter himself; he remained free and had neither abdicated nor been deposed. If he made his way to the Russian army in Germany, calling on the king of Prussia to support him, a civil war was inevitable. Accordingly, he must be found, seized, and forced to accept what had happened.
After this tumultuous, triumphant day, Catherine was exhausted, but, sustained by excitement and ambition, she decided to finish what she had begun. A strong force of the Guards pledged to her must march to Oranienbaum to arrest Peter III. Here, Catherine made another dramatic decision: she would lead this march herself. First, she had herself proclaimed colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards; this was the traditional privilege and rank of a Russian sovereign. Borrowing different parts of the bottle-green Preobrazhensky uniform from various obliging young officers, she dressed and put on one of their black, three-cornered hats crowned with oak leaves. Still, one piece of equipment was missing. A twenty-two-year-old subaltern of the Horse Guards rode out of the ranks to hand to the empress the sword knot her uniform was lacking. His officers frowned on the impertinence, but his proud, confident bearing pleased the empress, who accepted the gift with a smile. She asked his name; it was Gregory Potemkin. His face, his name, and his action would not be forgotten.
By then, it was ten o’clock at night. Catherine mounted a white stallion, placed herself at the head of the three Guards regiments, the Horse Guards, and two infantry regiments of the line, and led fourteen thousand men out of St. Petersburg to Oranienbaum. It was a dramatic sight, the slim figure of Catherine, a superb horsewoman, at the
