head of a long column of marching men. At her side rode Kyril Razumovsky, colonel of the Semyonovsky Guards, and Princess Dashkova, also dressed in a Preobrazhensky uniform, which she had borrowed from a young lieutenant. This was her moment of glory, riding beside her beloved empress, and looking—as she described herself—“like a fifteen-year-old boy.” She saw herself that night as the central figure in the great adventure. Eventually, this presumption was to lose her the friendship she valued so highly, but on this night nothing clouded her relationship with Catherine. Despite the enthusiasm of their departure, everyone on the march—the empress, the princess, the officers, and the men—all were exhausted. When the column reached a wooden hut on the road to Peterhof, Catherine called a halt. The soldiers watered their horses and bivouacked in the open fields. Catherine and Dashkova, both fully clothed, lay down in the hut, side by side on a narrow bed, but both women were too excited to sleep.
Before leaving St. Petersburg, Catherine had sent off messages. One was to the Kronstadt island fortress and the ships waiting there, informing them of her accession. A special courier was dispatched to the army in Pomerania authorizing Nikita Panin’s brother, General Peter Panin, to take over as commander. Another courier went to General Zakhar Chernyshev in Silesia ordering him to bring his army corps back to Russia immediately. If the king of Prussia tried to prevent this, Chernyshev was to “join the nearest army corps of her Imperial Roman Majesty, the empress of Austria.” Before leaving, she also wrote to the Senate, “I go now with the army to secure and safeguard the throne and leave in your care as my highest representatives with fullest confidence, the fatherland, the people, and my son.”
• • •
That morning of June 28, even as Catherine was being proclaimed Autocrat of All the Russias in the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Peter III, wearing his blue Prussian uniform, was drilling his Holstein soldiers on the parade ground at Oranienbaum. This concluded, he ordered six large carriages to carry him and his entourage to Peterhof, where, he had informed Catherine, he would celebrate his name day, the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. In the emperor’s party were Elizabeth Vorontsova; her uncle, Chancellor Michael Vorontsov; the Prussian ambassador, Baron von Goltz; Count Alexander Shuvalov; the elderly Field Marshal Count Munnich; and the senior senator, Prince Trubetskoy. Many of these dignitaries were accompanied by their wives, and there were also sixteen young maids of honor who served the presumed empress-to-be. This cavalcade started without the usual escort of hussars; Peter had forgotten to order it.
In high spirits, the company arrived at Peterhof at two in the afternoon. The carriages pulled up in front of the Mon Plaisir pavilion, where Catherine was supposed to be waiting to congratulate her consort on his name day. When they arrived, the doors and windows were tightly closed and no one came out to greet them. No one, in fact, was there at all except a frightened servant, who could tell them only that the empress had left early that morning and that he did not know where she had gone. Refusing to believe what he had seen and been told, Peter rushed inside the empty house, running from room to room, peeping under beds, lifting mattresses, and finding nothing except the gala dress laid out the night before for Catharine to wear at Peter’s name day celebration. Infuriated that Catherine had spoiled his moment and his day, he screamed at Vorontsova, “Didn’t I always tell you she was capable of anything?” After an hour of tumult and dismay, the chancellor, Michael Vorontsov, volunteered to go to back to St. Petersburg, where Catherine was presumed to have gone, to seek information and “speak seriously to the empress.” Alexander Shuvalov and Prince Trubetskoy offered to accompany him. At six o’clock, when they reached the city, Catherine was still there and Vorontsov made an effort to tell her that she should not be taking up arms against her husband and sovereign. Catherine’s response was to lead him onto a palace balcony and point to the cheering crowd below. “Deliver your message to them, sir,” she said. “It is they who command here. I only obey.” Vorontsov was taken to his house where, that evening, he wrote to Catherine as his “most gracious sovereign, whom the inscrutable decree of Providence has raised to the Imperial throne.” He asked to be relieved of all his offices and duties and allowed to pass the rest of his days in seclusion. Before nightfall, Alexander Shuvalov swore allegiance to Catherine.
At three in the afternoon, after these three emissaries had departed from Peterhof, Peter received the first sketchy information about the coup. A barge, traveling across the bay from the city, carried the fireworks intended for use that night in the name day celebration. The lieutenant in charge, a specialist in fireworks, told Peter that at nine that morning, when he had left the capital, there was great excitement in the barracks and the streets because of a rumor that Catherine had arrived in the city and that some of the troops had proclaimed her empress. He knew no more because, given orders to deliver fireworks to Peterhof, he had departed.
That afternoon at Peterhof was warm and sunny, and the lesser members of Peter’s entourage remained on the terraces near the cool spray of the fountains or wandered through the gardens under the cloudless summer sky. Peter and his primary counselors gathered near the main canal, where Peter paced back and forth, listening to advice. An officer was sent to Oranienbaum to order the Holstein regiments stationed there to march to Peterhof, where, Peter declared, he would defend himself to the death. When the Holstein soldiers arrived, they were posted on the road to the capital, but, not understanding that they might be ordered to fight, they had brought only their wooden parade ground rifles. Another officer was sent to Kronstadt, five miles across the bay, to order three thousand men of the island garrison to come by boat to Peterhof. A uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards was found so that Peter might replace the Prussian uniform he was wearing. The old soldier Munnich, in an effort to put some steel into Peter, urged him to put on this uniform, ride straight to the capital, show himself to the people and the Guards, and remind them of their oath of loyalty. Goltz offered different advice: he counseled going to Narva, seventy miles to the west, where part of the army destined for the Danish war was assembling; at the head of this force, Peter could march on St. Petersburg and retake his throne. The Holsteiners, knowing their master’s character best, advised him bluntly to flee to Holstein, where he would be safe. Peter did nothing.
Meanwhile, the officer sent to Kronstadt arrived at the island fortress and found the commandant of the garrison unaware of any of the turmoil either in the capital or at Peterhof. Soon after, another messenger dispatched by Peter arrived and countermanded the order to send three thousand men to Peterhof, telling the island commander simply to secure the Kronstadt fortress in the emperor’s name. Subsequently, he returned to Peterhof to report to the emperor that the fortress was being held for him. Shortly thereafter, Admiral Ivan Talyzin, commander of the Russian navy, who that morning had sworn allegiance to Catherine, arrived at Kronstadt from St. Petersburg and took command of the fortress himself in the name of the new empress. The soldiers of the garrison and the crews of the naval vessels in the harbor swore allegiance to Catherine.
At ten that night, Peter’s last envoy returned from Kronstadt to Peterhof with what he thought was good news, although by now it was inaccurate: that the fortress was secure for the emperor. During this messenger’s six-hour absence, the situation at Peterhof had deteriorated. Members of Peter’s suite were aimlessly walking about or had stretched out to sleep on benches in the park. The Holstein troops, fresh from Oranienbaum but possessing no weapons, now were deployed “to repel attack.” Peter, told that Kronstadt was secure, decided to go to the island. A large galley, anchored offshore, was brought alongside the quay and he boarded, taking many of his officers with him. He refused to leave Elizabeth Vorontsova behind and insisted on taking along her sixteen frightened maids of honor.
Out on the bay in the silvery brightness of the White Nights, visibility was almost as clear as daylight. The wind was favorable, and at about one o’clock in the morning, the crowded galley approached Kronstadt Harbor. The entrance was closed by a boom. The vessel dropped anchor outside the walls. Peter climbed down into a small boat and was rowed toward the fortress to command that the boom be raised. The young officer on duty on the ramparts shouted down that the boat should keep away or he would open fire. Peter stood up, throwing aside his cloak in order to display his uniform and the broad blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew. “Don’t you know me?” he shouted. “I am your emperor!”
“We no longer have an emperor!” came the reply. “Long live the Empress Catherine II! She is now our empress and we have orders to admit nobody within these walls. Another move forward and we fire!” Frightened, Peter
