Peter III Fedorovich Romanov
Peter III (Pyotr Fyodorovich Romanov, birth nameCarl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp; February 21, 1728, Kiel - July 17, 1762, Ropsha - Russian emperor in 1761-1762, the first representative of the Holstein-Gottorp (or rather: Oldenburg dynasty, Holstein-Gottorp branches, officially bearing the name "Imperial House of the Romanovs") on the Russian throne, husband of Catherine II, father of Paul I
Peter III (in the uniform of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, 1762)
Peter III
The short reign of Peter III lasted less than a year, but during this time the emperor managed to set against himself almost all the influential forces in Russian noble society: the court, the guards, the army and the clergy.
He was born on February 10 (21), 1728 in Kiel in the Duchy of Holstein (northern Germany). The German prince Karl Peter Ulrich, who received the name Peter Fedorovich after the adoption of Orthodoxy, was the son of Duke Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp and the eldest daughter of Peter I Anna Petrovna.
Karl Friedrich Holstein-Gottorp
Anna Petrovna
Having ascended the throne, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna summoned the son of her beloved sister to Russia and appointed her heir in 1742. Karl Peter Ulrich was brought to St. Petersburg in early February 1742 and on November 15 (26) was declared her heir. Then he converted to Orthodoxy and received the name of Peter Fedorovich
Elizaveta Petrovna
As a teacher, Academician J. Shtelin was assigned to him, who could not achieve any significant success in the education of the prince; he was fascinated only by military affairs and playing the violin.
Pyotr Fedorovich when he was the Grand Duke. Job portrait
In May 1745 the prince was proclaimed the ruling duke of Holstein. In August 1745 he married Princess Sophia Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine II.
Pyotr Fedorovich (Grand Duke) and Ekaterina Alekseevna (Grand Duchess
Tsarevich Pyotr Fedorovich and Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna. 1740s Hood. G.-K. Groot.
The marriage was unsuccessful, only in 1754 their son Pavel was born, and in 1756 their daughter Anna, who died in 1759. He had a connection with the maid of honor E.R. Vorontsova, niece of Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov. Being an admirer of Frederick the Great, he publicly expressed his pro-Prussian sympathies during the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763. Peter's open hostility to everything Russian and his obvious inability to state affairs caused concern Elizabeth Petrovna. In court circles, projects were put forward to transfer the crown to the young Paul during the regency of Catherine or Catherine herself.
Portrait of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich as a child ( , )
Peter and Catherine were granted the possession of Oranienbaum near St. Petersburg
However, the empress did not dare to change the order of succession to the throne. The former duke, who was trained from birth to take the Swedish throne, since he was also the grandson of Charles XII, studied the Swedish language, Swedish law and Swedish history, was accustomed from childhood to treat Russia with prejudice. A zealous Lutheran, he could not reconcile himself to being forced to change his faith, and at every opportunity tried to emphasize his contempt for Orthodoxy, the customs and traditions of the country that he was to rule. Peter was neither evil nor treacherous; on the contrary, he often showed gentleness and mercy. However, his extreme nervous imbalance made the future sovereign dangerous, as a person who concentrated absolute power over a vast empire in his hands.
Peter III Fedorovich Romanov
Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova, favorite of Peter III
Having become the new emperor after the death of Elizabeth Petrovna, Peter quickly angered the courtiers against himself, attracting foreigners, the guards to government positions, canceling the Elizabethan liberties, the army, concluding a peace unfavorable for Russia with defeated Prussia, and, finally, the clergy, ordering all the icons to be taken out of the churches , except for the most important ones, to shave their beards, take off their vestments and change into frock coats in the likeness of Lutheran pastors.
Empress Catherine the Great with her husband Peter III of Russia and their son, the future Emperor Paul I
On the other hand, the emperor softened the persecution of the Old Believers, signed in 1762 a decree on the freedom of the nobility, abolishing the compulsory service for representatives of the noble class. It seemed that he could count on the support of the nobles. However, his reign ended tragically.
Peter III is depicted on horseback among a group of soldiers. The emperor wears the orders of St. Andrew the First-Called and St. Anne. Snuffbox decorated with miniatures
Many were not happy that the emperor made an alliance with Prussia: shortly before, under the late Elizabeth Petrovna, Russian troops won a number of victories in the war with the Prussians, and Russian empire could count on considerable political benefits from the successes achieved on the battlefields. The alliance with Prussia crossed out all such hopes and violated good relations with Russia's former allies - Austria and France. Even greater dissatisfaction was caused by the involvement of numerous foreigners in the Russian service by Peter III. At the Russian court there were no influential forces whose support would ensure the stability of the reign of the new emperor.
Portrait of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich
Unknown Russian artist PORTRAIT OF EMPEROR PETER III Last third of the 18th century.
Taking advantage of this, a strong court party, hostile to Prussia and Peter III, in alliance with a group of guards, carried out a coup.
Pyotr Fedorovich was always afraid of Catherine. When, after the death of Empress Elizabeth, he became the Russian Tsar Peter III, almost nothing connected the crowned spouses, but they shared a lot. Rumors reached Catherine that Peter wanted to get rid of her by imprisoning her in a monastery or depriving her of her life, and declare their son Paul illegitimate. Catherine knew how harshly the Russian autocrats treated hateful wives. But for many years she had been preparing to ascend the throne and was not going to give it up to a man whom everyone did not like and "slandered out loud without trembling."
Georg Christoph Groot. Portrait of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich (later Emperor Peter III
Six months after Peter III ascended the throne on January 5, 1762, a group of conspirators led by Catherine's lover Count G.G. Orlov took advantage of Peter's absence at court and issued a manifesto on behalf of the imperial guard regiments, according to which Peter was deprived of the throne, and Catherine was proclaimed empress. She was crowned bishop of Novgorod, while Peter was imprisoned in a country house in Ropsha, where he was killed in July 1762, apparently with the knowledge of Catherine. According to a contemporary of those events, Peter III "allowed himself to be overthrown from the throne, like a child who is sent to sleep." His death soon finally freed Catherine the way to power.
in the Winter Palace, the coffin was placed next to the coffin of Empress Catherine II (the hall was designed by the architect Rinaldi)
After official ceremonies, the ashes of Peter III and Catherine II were transferred from the Winter Palace to the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress
This allegorical engraving by Nicholas Anselin is dedicated to the exhumation of Peter III
Tombs of Peter III and Catherine II in the Peter and Paul Cathedral
Hat of Emperor Peter III. 1760s
Ruble of Peter III 1762 St. Petersburg silver
Portrait of Emperor Peter III (1728-1762) and a view of the monument to Empress Catherine II in St. Petersburg
Unknown North Russian carver. Plaquette with a portrait of Grand Duke Pyotr Fedorovich. St. Petersburg (?), Ser. 19th century. Mammoth tusk, relief carving, engraving, drilling Peter III, his relatives and his entourage ":
Part 1 - Peter III Fedorovich Romanov
The Russian Emperor Peter III (Peter Fedorovich, born Karl Peter Ulrich Holstein of Gottorp) was born on February 21 (10 according to the old style) February 1728 in the city of Kiel in the Duchy of Holstein (now - the territory of Germany).
His father is Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein of Gottorp, nephew of the Swedish King Charles XII, his mother is Anna Petrovna, daughter of Peter I. Thus, Peter III was the grandson of two sovereigns and could, under certain conditions, be a contender for both the Russian and Swedish thrones .
In 1741, after the death of Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, he was chosen to succeed her husband Frederick, who received the Swedish throne. In 1742, Peter was brought to Russia and declared by his aunt to be the heir to the Russian throne.
Peter III became the first representative of the Holstein-Gottorp (Oldenburg) branch of the Romanovs on the Russian throne, which ruled until 1917.
Peter's relationship with his wife did not work out from the very beginning. All free time he spent doing military exercises and maneuvers. During the years spent in Russia, Peter never made any attempt to get to know this country, its people and history better. Elizaveta Petrovna did not allow him to participate in solving political issues, and the only position in which he could prove himself was the position of director of the gentry corps. Meanwhile, Peter openly criticized the activities of the government, and during the Seven Years' War he publicly expressed sympathy for the Prussian king Frederick II. All this was widely known not only at court, but also in the wider strata of Russian society, where Peter did not enjoy either authority or popularity.
The beginning of his reign was marked by numerous favors to the nobility. Returned from exile, the former regent Duke of Courland and many others. The Secret Investigation Office was destroyed. On March 3 (February 18 according to the old style), 1762, the Emperor issued a Decree on the Liberty of the Nobility (Manifesto "On the Granting of Liberty and Freedom to All the Russian Nobility").
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
Peter III (short biography)
The biography of Karl-Peter-Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp or Peter the Third is full of events and sharp turns. He was born on the twenty-first of February 1728 and left without a mother at an early age. At the age of eleven, he also lost his father. The young man was prepared to rule Sweden, but everything changed when Elizabeth, who became in 1741, announced her nephew Peter the Third Fedorovich as the heir to her throne.
Researchers claim that he was not a great intellectual, but he was quite proficient in Latin and the Lutheran catechism (he also knew a little French). The Empress forced Peter the Third to learn the Russian language 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 a 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, as he openly expressed his positive attitude towards Frederick II during the Seven Years' War.
With his most important manifesto of February 18, 1762, the ruler Peter the Third abolished the obligatory service of the nobility, the Secret Chancellery, and also allowed schismatics to return to their homeland. However, even these measures did not bring people's love to the king. For a short period of his reign, serfdom was strengthened. He also ordered priests to cut their beards and dress in the manner of how Lutheran pastors dress.
Without hiding his admiration for the ruler of Prussia (Frederick the Second), Peter the Third 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 wife of Peter Ekaterina Alekseevna acted as the initiator of this conspiracy.
These events were the beginning palace coup 1762, in which M. Volkonsky, K. Razumovsky, and also G. Orlov took part.
Already in 1762, the Izmailovsky and Semyonovsky regiments swear allegiance to Catherine. It is in their escort that she goes to the Kazan Cathedral, where she is proclaimed empress.
Tsar Peter the Third was exiled to Ropsha, where he died on July 9, 1762.
Even 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 legitimate heir to the Russian throne. He was also a Swedish prince, as he was the grandson of Queen Ulrika Eleonora, who inherited the power of Charles XII, who had no children. Therefore, the boy was brought up in the Lutheran faith, and his tutor 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-Eleonora 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 success, because he did not want to study the foundations of Orthodoxy and Russian literature. After the birth of her grandson Pavel Petrovich on September 20, 1754, the empress began to draw the smart and determined Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna closer to her, and allowed her stubborn nephew to create the Holstein Guards Regiment in Oranienbaum “for fun”. Without a doubt, she wanted to declare Paul heir to the throne, and proclaim Catherine regent until he came of age. This further worsened the relationship of the spouses.
After the sudden death of Elizabeth Petrovna on January 5, 1762, Grand Duke Peter III Fedorovich officially married the kingdom. However, he did not stop those timid economic and administrative reforms 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 St. Petersburg.
By this time, a difficult domestic 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 landlords just did not have the opportunity to take their lives, punish them with a cattle whip and torture them. Nobles received an unlimited right to buy and sell peasants. In Elizabethan times, the main form of protest by serfs, schismatics and sectarians was the mass escape 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 "robber bands". The reign of the "daughter of Petrova" was not only a period of flourishing of literature and art, the emergence 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, impotence against social injustice.
“Development stopped before its growth; in the years of courage, he remained the same as he was in childhood, he grew up without maturing, - he 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 that can be argued with. Of all the previous sovereigns and sovereigns, perhaps only he held out on the throne for 186 days, although he was distinguished by independence in making political decisions. The negative characterization of Peter III is rooted in the times of Catherine II, who made every effort to discredit 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 went to the grave,” wrote N.M. 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 grandiose victories over the best Prussian army in Europe, Frederick II the Great in 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, which 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 token of apology in front of the empty building of the Prussian embassy. Commander-in-Chief Russian army Duke Georg of Holstein-Gottorp was appointed. When the emperor's favorite, Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova, asked him about this strange act: “What did you, Petrusha, get this Friedrich for - after all, we beat him in the tail and mane?”, He sincerely replied that “I love Friedrich because I love everyone! » However, most of all, Peter III valued a reasonable order and discipline, considering the order established in Prussia as a model. Imitating Frederick the Great, who played the flute beautifully, the emperor diligently studied violin skills!
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 to draw it into new war Frederick the Great did not dare. Yes, and Rumyantsev was far from delighted to have the Prussians beaten by him many times as allies!
Lomonosov reacted in his pamphlet to the accession of Peter III:
“Have any of those born into the world heard,
So that the triumphant people
Surrendered into the hands of the vanquished?
Oh shame! Oh, strange twist!
Frederick II the Great, in turn, awarded the emperor the rank of colonel in the Prussian army, which further outraged the Russian officers, who defeated the previously invincible Prussians near Gross-Jägersdorf, and near Zorndorf, and near 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-Frederick-August, Princess von Anhalt-Zerbst, in Orthodoxy, Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna. Her father Christian-Augustin was in active Prussian service and was the governor of the city of Stettin, and her mother Johanna-Elizabeth came from an old noble family of Holstein-Gottorp. Grand Duke and his wife turned out to be distant relatives, and even were similar in character. Both were distinguished by a rare sense of purpose, fearlessness bordering on insanity, unlimited ambition and exorbitant vanity. Both husband and wife considered monarchy their natural right, and their own decisions - the law for subjects.
And although Ekaterina Alekseevna gave the heir to the throne a son, Pavel Petrovich, relations between the spouses always remained cool. Despite court gossip about his wife's countless adulteries, 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-Becksky, Duke Ludwig of Holstein and Baron Ungern - willingly gossiped about Catherine's love affairs either with Prince Saltykov (according to rumors, Pavel Petrovich was his son), then with Prince Poniatovsky, then with Count Chernyshev, then with Count Grigory Orlov.
The emperor was annoyed by Catherine's desire to become Russified, to comprehend the Orthodox religious sacraments, to learn the traditions and customs of the future. Russian subjects which Peter III considered pagan. He said more than once that, like Peter the Great, he would divorce his wife and become the husband of the chancellor's daughter, Elizaveta Mikhailovna Vorontsova.
Catherine paid him in full reciprocity. The reason for the desired divorce from his unloved wife was the “letters” fabricated in Versailles by Grand Duchess Catherine to Field Marshal Apraksin that after the victory over the Prussian troops near Memel in 1757 he should not enter into East Prussia to enable Frederick the Great to recover from his defeat. On the contrary, when the French ambassador in Warsaw demanded from Elizaveta Petrovna the removal of the King of the Commonwealth, Stanislav-August Poniatowski, from St. Petersburg, alluding to his love affair with the Grand Duchess, Catherine frankly declared to the Empress: Russian empress and how dare he impose his will on the mistress of the strongest European power?
Chancellor Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov did not have to prove the forgery of these papers, but, nevertheless, in a private conversation with the St. Petersburg police chief Nikolai Alekseevich Korf, Peter III expressed his innermost thoughts: 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 with slander against the emperor's wife.
However, this 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 popularity to him among the domestic nobility. In fact, brought up in a strict German atmosphere, he was disappointed with the morals that reigned at the court of his compassionate aunt with her favorites, ministerial leapfrog, eternal ball 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. The Russian nobles 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 the door of Her Majesty at night, is obliged to listen and, when the mother empress screams from a nightmare, put her 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 dreamed of the same scene, how she was raising the deposed Anna Leopoldovna from her bed, by that time long dead in Kholmogory. It didn't help that she changed her bedroom almost every night. There were more and more noble Lebedevs. For simplicity, they began to be called such people from the peasant class after another passportization 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, the nobles disgraced under Elizabeth Petrovna - Duke Biron, Count Minich, Count Lestok and Baroness Mengden - were returned from exile and restored in rank and condition. This was perceived as the threshold of a new "Bironism"; the appearance of a new foreign favorite was simply not yet looming. Lieutenant-General Count Ivan Vasilyevich Gudovich, military to the marrow of his bones, was clearly not suitable for this role, the toothless and idiotically smiling Minich and the forever frightened Biron were not taken into account by anyone, of course.
The very sight of St. Petersburg, where among the dugouts and "smoky huts" of state serfs and townspeople assigned to the settlement, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Winter Palace and the house of the governor-general of the capital Menshikov, with cluttered dirty streets, towered, disgusted the emperor. However, Moscow looked no 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 the streets with stone. Peter III wanted to slightly ennoble the appearance of his capital - "Northern Venice".
And he, together with the governor-general of St. Petersburg, Prince Cherkassky, gave the order to clean up the construction site littered for many years winter palace, through which the courtiers made their way to the front door, as if through the ruins of Pompeii, tearing camisoles and soiling their boots. The Petersburgers sorted out all the rubble in half an hour, taking for themselves broken bricks, and trimmings of rafters, and rusty nails, and the remains of glass and fragments of scaffolding. The square was soon ideally paved by Danish masters and became the decoration of the capital. The city began to gradually rebuild, for which the townspeople were extremely grateful to Peter III. The same fate befell the construction dumps in Peterhof, Oranienbaum, at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and on Strelna. The Russian nobles saw this as a bad sign - they did not like foreign orders and were afraid from the time of Anna Ioannovna. The new urban quarters beyond the Moika, where commoners opened "profitable houses" sometimes looked better than the town's wooden huts, as if transferred from the boyar Moscow past.
The emperor was also disliked for the fact that he adhered to a strict daily routine. Getting up at six o'clock in the morning, Peter III raised the commanders of the guards regiments on alarm, and arranged military reviews with obligatory exercises in stepping, shooting and combat formation. The Russian guardsmen hated discipline and military exercises with every fiber of their soul, considering it their privilege to free order, sometimes appearing in regiments in home dressing gowns and even in nightgowns, but with a charter sword at the waist! The last straw was the introduction military uniform Prussian style. Instead of the Russian dark green army uniform with red standing collars and cuffs, uniforms of orange, blue, orange and even canary colors should have been worn. Wigs, aiguillettes and espantons became obligatory, because of which the “Preobrazhenets”, “Semyonovtsy” and “Izmailovtsy” became almost indistinguishable, and narrow boots, in the tops of which, as of old, flat German vodka flasks could not fit. In a conversation with his close friends, the brothers Razumovsky, Alexei and Cyril, Peter III said that the Russian "guards are the current Janissaries, and they should be liquidated!"
Reasons for a palace conspiracy in the guard accumulated enough. Being a smart man, 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 Russia's strange end to its participation in the Seven Years' War, the Holstein-Gothorp and Danish nobles did not hurry to Petersburg, which clearly sought to pursue an isolationist policy that did not promise any benefits to the professional military. Desperate rogues, drunkards and people of dubious reputation were recruited into the Holstein Battalion. And the peacefulness of the emperor alarmed the mercenaries - double salaries were paid to Russian military personnel only during the period of hostilities. Peter III was not going to deviate 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 mood 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 sinister Secret Chancellery was liquidated, and its archive "to eternal oblivion" was transferred to the Governing Senate for permanent storage. Fatal for any Russian filed formula "Word and deed!", Which was enough to "test on the rack" of anyone, regardless of his 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 generally abolished physical torture of representatives of the ruling class and provided them with guarantees of personal immunity, if this did not concern treason to the Fatherland. Even such a "humane" execution for the nobles as cutting the tongue and exile to Siberia instead of cutting off the head, introduced by Elizaveta Petrovna, was prohibited. His decrees confirmed and expanded the noble monopoly on distillation.
Russian nobility was shocked by the public process in the case of General Maria Zotova, whose estates were sold at auction in favor of disabled soldiers and crippled peasants for the inhuman treatment of serfs. The Prosecutor General of the Senate, Count Alexei Ivanovich Glebov, was ordered to begin an investigation into the case of many fanatical nobles. In this regard, the emperor issued a separate decree, the first in Russian legislation, qualifying the murder of their peasants by landowners as "tyrannical torment", for which such landowners were punished with life exile.
From now on, it was forbidden to punish peasants with batogs, which often led to their death - "for this, use only rods, with which to flog only soft places in order to prevent self-mutilation."
All fugitive peasants, Nekrasov sectarians and deserters, who fled in tens of thousands for the most part to border river Yaik, beyond the Urals, and even to the distant Commonwealth and Khiva in the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, were amnestied. According to 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 Yaitsky Cossack army. It was here that the most explosive human material accumulated, from now on fiercely devoted to Peter III. The Old Believers-schismatics were exempted from the tax for dissent and could now live their way. Finally, all debts accumulated from the Cathedral Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich were written off from privately owned serfs. There was no limit to the rejoicing of the people: prayers were offered to the emperor in all rural parishes, regimental chapels and schismatic sketes.
The merchant class also turned out to be treated kindly. By personal 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. For support foreign trade The State Bank was established 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 forbid representatives of the clergy to own serfs and artisans. Church hierarchs greeted these measures with frank 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 in one way or another improved the situation of the peasants and working people, and the "white clergy", who constituted a stable opposition to the growing absolutism from Patriarch Nikon, lay the abyss. Russian Orthodox Church now it did not represent a single force, and society turned out to be split. Having become Empress, Catherine II canceled these decrees, what to do Holy Synod obedient to his 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 to develop grain exports, contained specific instructions on the need for energetic nobles and merchants to take care of the forest as 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. The 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, the day before his own name day, Peter III, accompanied by the Holstein battalion, together with Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova, left for Oranienbaum to prepare everything for the celebration. Ekaterina was left in Peterhof unattended. Early in the morning, having missed the solemn train of the emperor, the carriage with the sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov and Count Alexander Ilyich Bibikov turned to Moplesir, took Ekaterina and rushed to St. Petersburg at a gallop. Here everything was already prepared. The money for the organization of the palace coup was again borrowed from the French ambassador, Baron de Breteuil - King Louis XV wanted Russia to start hostilities against Prussia and England again, which was promised by Count Panin in the event of the successful overthrow of Peter III. Grand Duchess Catherine, as a rule, remained silent when Panin colorfully described her appearance " new Europe under the auspices of the Russian Empire.
Four hundred "Preobrazhentsev", "Izmailovtsy" and "Semenovtsy", fairly warmed up by vodka and unrealizable hopes to eradicate everything foreign, welcomed the former German princess as an Orthodox Russian empress as a "mother"! In the Kazan Cathedral, Catherine II read out the Manifesto about 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 contained a hint that after the coming of age of her son Paul, she would resign. Catherine managed to read this paragraph 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 doorways. Only the Horse Guards Regiment tried to break through to the Nevsky, but on the bridges, wheel to wheel, guns were placed tightly under the command of the zalmeister (lieutenant) of the guards artillery and the lover of the new empress, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov, who vowed to lose his life, but not to let him disrupt the coronation. It turned out to be 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 title 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 renunciation, arrogantly extended by his wife straight from the saddle. On the maid of honor, Countess Elizaveta Vorontsova, the Izmaylovo soldiers tore her ball gown into tatters, and his goddaughter, the young princess Vorontsova-Dashkova, boldly shouted to Peter in the face: “So, godfather, don’t be rude to your wife in the future!” The deposed emperor sadly replied: “My child, it does not hurt you to remember that driving bread and salt with honest fools like your sister and I is much safer than with great wise men who squeeze the juice from a lemon and throw the peel under their 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 Elizabeth 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 devoted lackey”.
On Saturday, July 6, Peter III was killed during a card game by his voluntary jailers Alexei Orlov and Prince Fyodor Baryatinsky. Guardsmen Grigory Potemkin and Platon Zubov, who were privy to the plans of the conspiracy and witnessed the bullying of the disgraced emperor, carried the guard incessantly, but they were not hindered. In the morning Orlov wrote in a drunken handwriting, swaying from insomnia, probably right on the flag officer’s drum, 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, all he needed was a pretext. And Orlov accused Peter of distorting the map, to which he shouted indignantly: "Who are you talking to, serf?!" An exact terrible blow followed in the throat with a fork, and with a wheeze, the former emperor fell back. Orlov was at a loss, but the resourceful Prince Baryatinsky immediately tightly tied the throat of the dying man with a silk Holstein scarf, so much so that the blood did not drain from the head and baked under the skin of the face.
Later, Alexei Orlov, who had sobered up, 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 my death, but I myself do not know how this trouble happened. We died when you do not have mercy. Mother - he is not in the world. But no one thought of this, and how can we think of raising our hands against the sovereign! But disaster struck. He argued at the table with Prince Fyodor Boryatinsky; before we [with Sergeant Potemkin] had time to separate them, he was already gone. We ourselves do not remember what we did, but we are all guilty and worthy of execution. Have mercy on me for my brother. I brought you a confession, and there is nothing to look for. Forgive me or tell me to finish soon. The light is not sweet - they angered you and ruined your souls forever.
Catherine shed a “widow's tear”, and generously rewarded all participants in the palace coup, at the same time assigning extraordinary military ranks. The Little Russian hetman, Field Marshal Count Kirill Grigoryevich Razumovsky began to receive "in addition to his hetman's income and the salary he received" 5,000 rubles a year and the real state councilor, senator and chief officer Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin - 5,000 rubles a year. Actual chamberlain Grigory Grigorievich Orlov was granted 800 souls of serfs, and the same number of seconds-major of the Preobrazhensky regiment Alexei Grigorievich Orlov. Lieutenant-Captain of the Preobrazhensky Regiment Pyotr Passek and Lieutenant of the Semenovsky Regiment Prince Fyodor Boryatinsky were awarded 24,000 rubles each. The attention of the empress was also attended by Lieutenant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, Prince Grigory Potemkin, who received 400 souls of serfs, and Prince Pyotr Golitsyn, who was given 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 of hemorrhoidal colic and severe pain in the intestines" - which was absolutely incomprehensible to most of those present due to widespread medical illiteracy - and even staged magnificent " funeral" of a simple wooden coffin, without any decorations, which was placed in the Romanov family vault. At night, the remains of the murdered 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 tied at the time of death with a scarf, a black man lay in the coffin! The soldiers of the guard immediately decided that instead of Peter III they had put a “black arap”, one of the many palace jesters, all the more so because they knew that the guards of honor were preparing for the funeral the next day. This rumor spread among the guards, soldiers and Cossacks stationed in St. Petersburg. A rumor spread throughout Russia that Tsar Pyotr Fedorovich, kind to the people, miraculously escaped, and twice they interred not him, but some commoners or court jesters. 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 Believer 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. All those who helped her become empress soon had to be convinced of the great "gratitude" of Catherine II. Contrary to their opinion, in order for her to 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 to the probable 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. The Decembrist Mikhail Ivanovich Fonvizin left a curious entry: “In 1773 ... when the Tsarevich came of age and married a Darmstadt princess named Natalya 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 of her raise her adult son. Pavel Petrovich knew about this, agreed to accept the constitution offered to him by Panin, approved it with his signature and took an oath that, having reigned, he would not violate this fundamental state law that limited autocracy.
The peculiarity of all Russian conspiracies was that the oppositionists, who did not have such experience as their Western European associates, constantly sought to expand the limits of their narrow circle. And if the case concerned the higher clergy, then their plans became known even to the parish priests, who in Russia had to immediately explain to the common people the changes in state policy. It is impossible to consider the appearance of Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev precisely in 1773 as an accident or a mere coincidence: he could learn about the plans of high-ranking conspirators precisely from this source and in his own way use the opposition moods of the nobility against the empress in the capital, fearlessly moving towards the regular regiments of the imperial army in the Ural steppes, inflicting defeat after defeat on them.
No wonder Pugachev, like them, constantly appealed to the name of Pavel as the future successor of the "father's" work and the overthrow of the hated mother. Catherine II found out about the preparations for the coup, which coincided with the "Pugachevshchina", and spent almost a year in the admiral's cabin of her yacht Shtandart, which was constantly standing at the Vasilyevsky Spit under the protection of two newest battleships with faithful crews. In a difficult moment, she was ready to sail to Sweden or England.
After public execution Pugachev in Moscow, all high-ranking St. Petersburg conspirators were sent into honorable retirement. The overly energetic Ekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova went to her own estate for a long time, Count Panin, formally remaining the President of the Foreign Collegium, was actually removed from state affairs, and Grigory Grigoryevich 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, hero of the first Russian-Turkish war, was released from the post of commander of the Russian fleet and sent to the diplomatic service abroad.
The long and unsuccessful siege of Orenburg also had its reasons. Infantry General Leonty Leontievich Bennigsen later testified: “When the Empress lived in Tsarskoye 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 Tsarskoye Selo, especially at night, to prevent her from any unexpected undertaking. He even determined in advance the route along which he would withdraw with the troops if necessary; the roads along this route were studied 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 had escaped from the prison where he was held, falsely announcing his death. Pavel counted very much on the kind reception and devotion of these Cossacks... But he wanted to make Orenburg the capital.” Probably, Paul got this idea in 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 second "marriage" of the two most august dead in their coffins - Catherine II and Peter III!
So the palace coups in the “temple unfinished by Peter the Great” created a permanent basis for imposture, which pursued the interests and noble Russia and serf Orthodox Russia, and they happened almost simultaneously. This has been the case since the Time of Troubles.
Relations between Catherine and Peter III did not work out from the very beginning. The husband not only got himself numerous mistresses, but also openly declared that he intended to divorce his wife for the sake of Elizaveta Vorontsova. There was no need to wait for support from Catherine.
Peter III and Catherine II
A conspiracy against the emperor began to be prepared even before his ascension to the throne. Chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin had the most hostile feelings towards Peter. He was especially annoyed by the fact that the future ruler openly sympathized with the Prussian king. When Empress Elizaveta Petrovna fell seriously ill, the chancellor began to prepare the ground for a palace coup and wrote to Field Marshal Apraksin to return to Russia. Elizaveta Petrovna recovered from her illness and deprived the Chancellor of his ranks. Bestuzhev-Ryumin fell out of favor and did not finish his job.
During the reign of Peter III, Prussian orders were introduced in the army, which could not but arouse the indignation of the officers. It is worth noting that the emperor did not make any attempts to get acquainted with Russian customs and ignored Orthodox rites. The conclusion of peace with Prussia in 1762, according to which Russia voluntarily gave up East Prussia, became another reason for dissatisfaction with Peter III. In addition, the emperor intended to send the guards to the Danish campaign in June 1762, the goals of which were completely incomprehensible to the officers.
Elizaveta Vorontsova
The conspiracy against the emperor was organized by guard officers, including Grigory, Fedor and Alexei Orlov. Due to the controversial foreign policy Peter III, many officials joined the conspiracy. By the way, the ruler received reports of an impending coup, but he did not take them seriously.
Alexey Orlov
On June 28, 1762 (according to the old style), Peter III went to Peterhof, where his wife was to meet him. However, Catherine was not there - early morning she went to Petersburg with Alexei Orlov. The guards, the senate and the synod swore allegiance to her. In a critical situation, the emperor was confused and did not follow sound advice to flee to the Baltic states, where units loyal to him were stationed. Peter III signed the abdication of the throne and, accompanied by the guards, was taken to Ropsha.
On July 6, 1762 (according to the old style), he died. Historians are unanimous in their opinion that Catherine did not give the order to kill Peter, while experts emphasize that she did not prevent this tragedy. By official version, Peter died of an illness - an autopsy allegedly revealed signs of heart dysfunction and apoplexy. But most likely his killer was Alexei Orlov. Peter was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Subsequently, several dozen people pretended to be the surviving emperor, the most famous of them was the leader Peasants' War Emelyan Pugachev.
