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 bring the smart and decisive Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna closer to her, and allowed her stubborn nephew "for fun" to create a Holstein in Oranienbaum guards regiment. 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, the Grand Duke Peter III Fedorovich was officially married to 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. The 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 small in stature, with a disproportionately small head, and snub-nosed. He was disliked immediately because after the grandiose victories over the best Prussian army in Europe, 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, which returned to 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. Duke George of 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 did this Friedrich give you, Petrusha - 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 Alexandrovich Rumyantsev to Braunschweig. However, the Prussian army was in such a deplorable state that Frederick the Great did not dare to draw it into a new war. 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 Prussian army, which further outraged the Russian officers, who defeated the previously invincible Prussians near Gross-Jegersdorf, and near Zorndorf, and near Kunersdorf, and captured Berlin in 1760. Nothing but invaluable military experience, well-deserved authority, military ranks and orders Russian officers as a result of the bloody Seven Years' War, they did not receive.

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-Elisabeth 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 irritated by Catherine's desire to become Russified, to comprehend Orthodox religious sacraments, to learn the traditions and customs of 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 East Prussia in order to enable Frederick the Great to recover from defeat. On the contrary, when the French ambassador in Warsaw demanded that Elizaveta Petrovna remove 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 catch phrase of his 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 were returned from exile - Duke Biron, Count Minich, Count Lestok and Baroness Mengden 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 view of Petersburg, where among the dugouts and "smoky huts" of state serfs and townspeople assigned to the settlement, towered Peter-Pavel's Fortress, the Winter Palace and the house of the governor-general of the capital Menshikov, with cluttered dirty streets, 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 in front of the Winter Palace, littered for many years, through which the courtiers made their way to the main entrance, as if through the ruins of Pompeii, tearing camisoles and soiling boots. 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 "commercial 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 compulsory exercises in stepping, shooting and combat rebuilding. 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 pattern. 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 did not fit. In a conversation with his close friends, the Razumovsky brothers, Alexei and Kirill, 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 the strange end of Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War, the Holstein-Gothorp and Danish nobles were in no 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, however, 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 program “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.

The 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 landlords 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 whip only in soft places in order to prevent self-mutilation."

All fugitive peasants, Nekrasov sectarians and deserters, who fled in tens of thousands mostly to the 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 popular rejoicing: 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. The Russian Orthodox Church no longer represented a single force, and society was split. Having become Empress, Catherine II canceled these decrees in order to make the 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 energetic nobles and merchants to take care of the forest as a national wealth. 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 Grigorievich 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 again against Prussia and England, 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 accept state power into your 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 the coronation be disrupted. 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 to 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 two notes to Catherine II 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 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 without interruption, but they were not hindered. In the morning, Orlov wrote in a drunken and swaying hand 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, 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 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 Grigorievich 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. There was a rumor 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 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 note: “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 proposed 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 the public execution of Pugachev in Moscow, all the 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 Aleksey Grigoryevich Orlov-Chesmensky, the hero of the first Russian-Turkish war, was dismissed 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 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 Tsarskoye Selo, especially at night, in order 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 inexplicable - from the point of view of common sense- the deeds of Emperor Paul I was a solemn act of the second "wedding" of the two most august dead in their coffins - Catherine II and Peter III!

Thus, palace coups in the “temple unfinished by Peter the Great” created a constant ground for imposture, which pursued the interests of both noble Russia and serf Orthodox Russia, and even took place almost simultaneously. This has been the case since the Time of Troubles.

Emperor Peter III Fedorovich at birth was named Karl Peter Ulrich, since the future Russian ruler was born in port city Kiel, located in the north of the modern German state. On the Russian throne, Peter III lasted six months (1761-1762 are considered the official years of reign), after which he became a victim of a palace coup arranged by his wife, who replaced her deceased spouse.

It is noteworthy that in the following centuries, the biography of Peter III was presented exclusively from a pejorative point of view, so his image among people was unambiguously negative. But in recent times historians find evidence that this emperor had quite definite merits to the country, and a longer term of his reign would bring tangible benefits to the inhabitants of the Russian Empire.

Childhood and youth

Since the boy was born in the family of Duke Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp, the nephew of the Swedish king Charles XII, and his wife Anna Petrovna, the daughter of the king (that is, Peter III was the grandson of Peter I), his fate was predetermined from infancy. As soon as he was born, the child became the heir to the Swedish throne, and besides, in theory he could claim the Russian throne, although, according to the idea of ​​his grandfather Peter I, this should not have happened.

The childhood of Peter III was not royal at all. The boy lost his mother early, and his father, obsessed with reclaiming the lost Prussian lands, raised his son like a soldier. Already at the age of 10, little Karl Peter was awarded the rank of second lieutenant, and a year later the boy was orphaned.

Carl Peter Ulrich - Peter III

After the death of Karl Friedrich, his son ended up in the house of Bishop Adolf Eitinsky, his cousin uncle, where the boy turned into an object for humiliation, cruel jokes and where they regularly flogged. Nobody cared about the education of the crown prince, and by the age of 13 he could barely read. Karl Peter was in poor health, he was a frail and timid teenager, but at the same time kind and simple-hearted. He loved music and painting, although because of the memories of his father, he also adored the "military".

However, it is known that until his death, Emperor Peter III was afraid of the sound of cannon shots and rifle volleys. The chroniclers also noted the young man's strange predilection for fantasies and inventions, which often turned into outright lies. There is also a version that even in adolescence, Karl Peter became addicted to alcohol.

The life of the future All-Russian Emperor changed when he was 14 years old. On the Russian throne his aunt ascended, who decided to secure the monarchy for the descendants of her father. Since Karl Peter was the only direct heir to Peter the Great, he was summoned to St. Petersburg, where young Peter The third, who already bore the title of Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, took Orthodox religion and received the Slavic name of Prince Peter Fedorovich.

At the first meeting with her nephew, Elizabeth was amazed at his ignorance and assigned a tutor to the royal heir. The teacher noted excellent mental capacity ward, which debunks one of the myths about Peter III as a "slow-minded martinet" and "mentally handicapped".

Although there is evidence that the emperor behaved in public in an extremely strange way. Especially in temples. For example, during the service, Peter laughed and spoke loudly. Yes, and with foreign ministers behaved familiarly. Perhaps this behavior gave rise to a rumor about his "inferiority".

Also in his youth, he had been ill with a severe form of smallpox, which could cause developmental disabilities. At the same time, Pyotr Fedorovich understood the exact sciences, geography and fortification, spoke German, French and Latin. But he practically did not know Russian. But he didn't want to master it either.

By the way, smallpox severely disfigured the face of Peter III. But this defect in appearance is not displayed in any portrait. And then no one thought about the art of photography - the first photo in the world appeared only after more than 60 years. So only his portraits, painted from life, but “embellished” by artists, survived to his contemporaries.

Governing body

After the death of Elizabeth Petrovna on December 25, 1761, Peter Fedorovich ascended the throne. But he was not crowned, it was planned to do this after a military campaign against Denmark. As a result, Peter III was crowned posthumously in 1796.

He spent 186 days on the throne. During this time, Peter the Third signed 192 laws and decrees. And that's not even counting the award nominations. So, despite the myths and rumors around his personality and activities, even in such a short period he managed to prove himself both in the external and in domestic politics countries.

The most important document of the reign of Peter Fedorovich is the “Manifesto on the Liberty of the Nobility”. This piece of legislation exempted nobles from the mandatory 25-year service and even allowed them to travel abroad.

Slandered Emperor Peter III

Of the other affairs of the emperor, it is worth noting a number of reforms on the transformation of the state system. He, being on the throne for only six months, managed to abolish the Secret Chancellery, introduce freedom of religion, abolish church supervision over the personal lives of his subjects, forbid giving away state lands to private ownership, and most importantly, make the court of the Russian Empire open. And he also declared the forest a national wealth, established the State Bank and introduced the first banknotes into circulation. But after the death of Pyotr Fedorovich, all these innovations were destroyed.

Thus, Emperor Peter III intended to make the Russian Empire freer, less totalitarian and more enlightened.

Despite this, most historians consider the short period and results of his reign to be among the worst for Russia. The main reason for this is the actual annulment of the results of the Seven Years' War by him. Peter has developed bad relationship with military officers, since he ended the war with Prussia and withdrew Russian troops from Berlin. Some regarded these actions as a betrayal, but in fact the victories of the guardsmen in this war brought glory either to them personally, or to Austria and France, whose side was supported by the army. But for the Russian Empire, this war was of no use.

He also decided to introduce the Prussian order into the Russian army - the guards had a new form, and now the punishments were also in the Prussian manner - the cane system. Such changes did not add to his authority, but, on the contrary, gave rise to discontent and uncertainty about the future both in the army and in court circles.

Personal life

When the future ruler was barely 17 years old, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna hurried to marry him. The German princess Sophia Frederica Augusta was chosen as his wife, whom the whole world knows today under the name Catherine II. The wedding of the heir was played on an unprecedented scale. As a gift, Peter and Catherine were presented with the palaces of the count - Oranienbaum near St. Petersburg and Lyubertsy near Moscow.

It is worth noting that Peter III and Catherine II could not stand each other and were considered married couple only legally. Even when his wife gave Peter the heir of Paul I, and then his daughter Anna, he joked that he did not understand "where she takes these children."

The infant heir, the future Russian Emperor Paul I, was taken away from his parents after birth, and Empress Elizaveta Petrovna herself immediately took up his upbringing. However, this did not upset Pyotr Fyodorovich at all. He never showed much interest in his son. He saw the boy once a week, this was the permission of the empress. Daughter Anna Petrovna died in infancy.

The difficult relationship between Peter the Third and Catherine II is evidenced by the fact that the ruler repeatedly quarreled publicly with his wife and even threatened to divorce her. Once, after his wife did not support the toast he had uttered at the feast, Peter III ordered the woman to be arrested. Catherine was saved from prison only by the intervention of Peter's uncle, Georg of Holstein-Gottorp. But with all the aggression, anger and, most likely, burning jealousy for his wife, Pyotr Fedorovich had respect for her mind. In difficult situations, more often economic and financial, Catherine's husband often turned to her for help. There is evidence that Peter III called Catherine II "Madame Help".

It is noteworthy that the absence of intimate relations with Catherine did not affect the personal life of Peter III. Pyotr Fedorovich had mistresses, the main of which was the daughter of General Roman Vorontsov. Two of his daughters were presented to the court: Catherine, who would become a friend of the imperial wife, and later Princess Dashkova, and Elizabeth. So she was destined to become the beloved woman and favorite of Peter III. For her sake, he was even ready to terminate the marriage, but this was not destined to happen.

Death

On the royal throne, Peter Fedorovich stayed a little longer than six months. By the summer of 1762, his wife Catherine II inspired her henchman to organize a palace coup, which took place at the end of June. Peter, struck by the betrayal of his environment, abdicated the Russian throne, which he initially did not value and did not want, and intended to return to his native country. However, by order of Catherine, the deposed emperor was arrested and placed in a palace in Ropsha near St. Petersburg.

And on July 17, 1762, a week after that, Peter III died. The official cause of death was an "attack of hemorrhoidal colic", aggravated by the abuse of alcoholic beverages. However, the main version of the death of the emperor is considered to be a violent death by hand, the elder brother - the main favorite of Catherine at that time. It is believed that Orlov strangled the prisoner, although neither the later medical examination of the corpse nor historical facts confirm this. This version is based on the "repentant letter" of Alexei, which has survived in our time in a copy, and modern scientists are sure that this paper is a fake made by Fyodor Rostopchin, right hand Paul the First.

Peter III and Catherine II

After the death of the former emperor, there was misconception about the personality and biography of Peter III, since all conclusions were made on the basis of the memoirs of his wife Catherine II, an active participant in the conspiracy, Princess Dashkova, one of the main ideologists of the conspiracy, Count Nikita Panin, and his brother, Count Peter Panin. That is, based on the opinion of those people who betrayed Pyotr Fedorovich.

It was precisely “thanks to” the notes of Catherine II that the image of Peter III was formed as a drunken husband who hanged a rat. Allegedly, the woman went into the emperor's office and was amazed at what she saw. There was a rat hanging over his desk. Her husband replied that she had committed a criminal offense and, according to military laws, was subjected to the most severe punishment. According to him, she was executed and will hang in front of the public for 3 days. This "story" was repeated by both Vasily Klyuchevsky, describing Peter the Third.

Whether this was in reality, or whether in this way Catherine II created her own positive image against its “unsightly” background, now it is not possible to find out.

Rumors of death have given rise to a considerable number of impostors calling themselves the "surviving king." Similar phenomena have happened before, it is worth remembering at least the numerous False Dmitrys. But in terms of the number of people who pretended to be the emperor, Pyotr Fedorovich has no competitors. At least 40 persons turned out to be "False Peters III", among which was Stepan Maly.

Memory

• 1934 - feature film "The Dissolute Empress" (as Peter III - Sam Jaffe)
• 1963 - feature film "Katerina from Russia" (in the role of Peter III - Raul Grassili)
• 1987 - the book "The Legend of the Russian Prince" - Mylnikov A.S.
• 1991 - feature film "Vivat, midshipmen!" (as Peter III -)
• 1991 - the book "The temptation of a miracle. "Russian Prince" and impostors "- Mylnikov A. S.
• 2007 - the book "Catherine II and Peter III: the history of the tragic conflict" - Ivanov O. A.
• 2012 - the book "The Heirs of the Giant" - Eliseeva O.I.
• 2014 - the series "Catherine" (in the role of Peter III -)
• 2014 - a monument to Peter III in the German city of Kiel (sculptor Alexander Taratynov)
• 2015 - series "The Great" (as Peter III -)
• 2018 - series " bloody mistress"(in the role of Peter III -)

The fate of famous personalities, their pedigree is always of interest to history buffs. Often the interest is in those who tragically died or were killed, especially if it happens at a young age. So, the personality of Emperor Peter III, whose fate was cruel to him from childhood, worries many readers.

Tsar Peter 3

Peter 3 was born on February 21, 1728 in the city of Kiel in the Duchy of Holstein. Today it is the territory of Germany. His father was the nephew of the King of Sweden, and his mother was the daughter of Peter I. Being a relative of two sovereigns, this man could become a contender for two thrones at once. But life decreed otherwise: the parents of Peter 3 left him early, which affected his fate.

Almost immediately, two months after the birth of the child, the mother of Peter 3 fell ill and died. At the age of eleven, he also lost his father: the boy remained in the care of his uncle. In 1742 he was transferred to Russia, where he became the heir to the Romanov dynasty. After the death of Elizabeth, he was on the Russian throne for only six months: he survived the betrayal of his wife and died in prison. Who are the parents of Peter 3 and what is their fate? This question interests many readers.

III Fedorovich

The father of Peter III was Karl-Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. He was born on April 30, 1700 in the city of Stockholm and was the nephew of Charles XII - King of Sweden. He failed to ascend the throne, and in 1721 Karl-Friedrich went to Riga. All the years after the death of his uncle Charles XII and before coming to Russia, the father of Peter III tried to return Schleswig to his possessions. He really hoped for the support of Peter I. In the same year, Karl-Friedrich travels from Riga to Russia, where he receives a salary from the Russian government and expects support for his rights on the throne of Sweden.

In 1724 he was engaged to Anna Petrovna, a Russian princess. He soon died, and the marriage took place already in 1725. These were the parents of Peter 3, who displeased Menshikov and made other enemies in the capital of Russia. Unable to withstand the harassment, in 1727 they left St. Petersburg and returned to Kiel. Here a young couple next year an heir was born, the future Emperor Peter 3. Karl-Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, died in 1739 in Holstein, leaving his eleven-year-old son an orphan.

Anna - mother of Peter 3

Russian princess Anna, mother of Peter III, was born in 1708 in Moscow. She and her younger sister Elizabeth were illegitimate until their father, Peter I, married their mother (Marta Skavronskaya). In February 1712, Anna became the real "Princess Anna" - she signed her letters to her mother and father that way. The girl was very developed and capable: at the age of six she learned to write, then she mastered four foreign languages.

At fifteen, she was considered the first beauty in Europe, and many diplomats dreamed of seeing Princess Anna Petrovna Romanova. She was described as a beautiful brunette of angelic appearance with a beautiful complexion and a slender figure. Father, Peter I, dreamed of intermarrying with Karl-Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp and therefore agreed to the engagement of his eldest daughter Anna with him.

The tragic fate of the Russian princess

Anna Petrovna did not want to leave Russia and part with her close relatives. But she had no choice: her father died, Catherine I ascended the throne, who died unexpectedly two years later. The parents of Peter 3 were harassed and forced to return to Kiel. Through the efforts of Menshikov, the young married couple remained almost impoverished, and in this state they arrived in Holstein.

Anna wrote many letters to her sister Elizabeth, in which she asked to be rescued from there. But she didn't get any answers. And her life was unhappy: her husband, Karl-Friedrich, changed a lot, drank a lot, went down. Spent a lot of time in dubious establishments. Anna was alone in the cold palace: here in 1728 she gave birth to her son. After the birth, a fever occurred: Anna was ill for two months. On May 4, 1728, she died. She was only 20 years old and her son was two months old. So, Peter 3 first lost his mother, and 11 years later, his father.

The parents of Peter 3 had an unfortunate fate, which involuntarily passed on to their son. He also lived a short life and died tragically, having managed to stay as emperor for only six months.

Peter III Fedorovich (born Karl Peter Ulrich, German Karl Peter Ulrich). Born February 10 (21), 1728 in Kiel - died July 6 (17), 1762 in Ropsha. Russian emperor (1762), the first representative of the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov dynasty on the Russian throne. Sovereign Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (1745). Grandson of Peter I.

Karl Peter, the future Emperor Peter III, was born on February 10 (21 according to the new style) February 1728 in Kiel (Holstein-Gottorp).

Father - Duke Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp.

Mother - Anna Petrovna Romanova, daughter.

In the marriage contract, concluded by his parents under Peter I in 1724, they renounced any claims to the Russian throne. But the king reserved the right to appoint as his successor "one of the princes born of God's blessing from this marriage."

In addition, Karl Friedrich, being the nephew of the Swedish king Charles XII, had rights to the throne of Sweden.

Shortly after the birth of Peter, his mother died, having caught a cold during fireworks in honor of the appearance of her son. The boy grew up in the backwaters of a tiny North German duchy. The father loved his son, but all his thoughts were directed to the return of Schleswig, which Denmark occupied at the beginning of the 18th century. Having neither military strength nor financial capabilities, Karl Friedrich pinned his hopes either on Sweden or on Russia. Marriage with Anna Petrovna was a legal consolidation of the Russian orientation of Karl Friedrich. But after the accession to the throne of the Russian Empire, Anna Ioannovna, this course became impossible. The new empress sought not only to deprive her cousin Elizabeth Petrovna of the rights to the inheritance, but also to secure it to the Miloslavsky line. The grandson of Peter the Great, who grew up in Kiel, was a constant threat to the dynastic plans of the childless Empress Anna Ioannovna, who repeated with hatred: "The devil still lives."

In 1732, by a demarche of the Russian and Austrian governments, with the consent of Denmark, Duke Karl Friedrich was asked to give up the rights to Schleswig for a huge ransom. Karl Friedrich categorically rejected this proposal. All hopes for the restoration of the territorial integrity of his duchy, the father placed on his son, inspiring him with the idea of ​​revenge. Karl Friedrich from an early age raised his son in a military way - in the Prussian way.

When Karl Peter was 10 years old, he was awarded the rank of second lieutenant, which made a great impression on the boy, he loved military parades.

At the age of eleven he lost his father. After his death, he was brought up in the house of his paternal cousin, Bishop Adolf of Eitinsky, later King of Sweden Adolf Fredrik. His educators O. F. Brummer and F. V. Berkhholz were not distinguished by high moral qualities and more than once severely punished the child. The crown prince of the Swedish crown was repeatedly flogged, subjected to other sophisticated and humiliating punishments.

Educators cared little about his education: by the age of thirteen he knew only a little French.

Peter grew up timid, nervous, impressionable, loved music and painting and at the same time adored everything military - but he was afraid of cannon fire (this fear remained with him for the rest of his life). It was with military comforts that all his ambitious dreams were connected. He did not differ in good health, on the contrary, he was sickly and frail. By nature, Peter was not evil, he often behaved ingenuously. Already in childhood he was addicted to wine.

Elizaveta Petrovna, who became Empress in 1741, wanted to secure the throne through her father's line and ordered to bring her nephew to Russia. In December, shortly after the accession to the throne of Empress Elisabeth, Major von Korf (husband of Countess Maria Karlovna Skavronskaya, the Empress's cousin) was sent to Kiel by her, and with him G. von Korf, the Russian envoy to the Danish court, to take the young duke to Russia .

Three days after the Duke's departure, Kiel learned of this, he traveled incognito, under the name of the young Count Ducker. At the last station before Berlin, they stopped and sent a quartermaster to the local Russian envoy (minister) von Brakel, and began to wait for him at the post station. But the night before, Brakel died in Berlin. This hastened their further journey to St. Petersburg. At Keslin, in Pomerania, the postmaster recognized the young duke. Therefore, they drove all night in order to quickly leave the Prussian borders.

On February 5 (16), 1742, Karl Peter Ulrich arrived safely in Russia, to the Winter Palace. There was a large gathering of people to see the grandson of Peter the Great. February 10 (21) celebrated the 14th year of his birth.

At the end of February 1742, Elizaveta Petrovna went with her nephew to Moscow for her coronation. Karl Peter Ulrich was present at the coronation in the Assumption Cathedral on April 25 (May 6), 1742, at a specially arranged place, near Her Majesty. After the coronation, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guard and every day walked in the uniform of this regiment. Also colonel of the First Life Cuirassier Regiment.

At the first meeting, Elizabeth was struck by the ignorance of her nephew and upset appearance: thin, sickly, with an unhealthy complexion His educator and teacher was Academician Jacob Shtelin, who considered his student to be quite capable, but lazy. The professor noticed his inclinations and tastes and arranged his first classes according to them. He read picture books with him, especially those depicting fortresses, siege and engineering weapons; did different mathematical models in a small form and on a large table he arranged complete experiments from them. From time to time he brought old Russian coins and, while explaining them, told ancient Russian history, and, according to the medals of Peter I, the latest history of the state. Twice a week I read newspapers to him and imperceptibly explained to him the basis of the history of European states, at the same time he occupied him with land maps of these states and showed their position on the globe.

In November 1742, Karl Peter Ulrich converted to Orthodoxy under the name of Peter Fedorovich. His official title included the words "Grandson of Peter the Great".

Peter III (documentary)

Growth of Peter III: 170 centimeters.

Personal life of Peter III:

In 1745, Peter married Princess Ekaterina Alekseevna (nee Sophia Frederica Augusta) of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Empress.

The wedding of the heir was played on a special scale. Peter and Catherine were granted possession of palaces - Oranienbaum near St. Petersburg and Lyubertsy near Moscow.

After the removal of the Holstein heirs Brummer and Berchholz from the heir to the throne, his upbringing was entrusted combat general Vasily Repnin, who looked at his duties through his fingers and did not prevent the young man from devoting all his time to playing soldiers. The education of the heir in Russia lasted only three years - after the wedding of Peter and Catherine, Shtelin was dismissed from his duties, but he forever retained Peter's disposition and trust.

The immersion of the Grand Duke in military amusements caused the growing irritation of the Empress. In 1747, she replaced Repnin with the Choglokovs, Nikolai Naumovich and Maria Simonovna, in whom she saw an example of a married couple sincerely loving each other. In pursuance of the instructions drawn up by Chancellor Bestuzhev, Choglokov tried to limit his ward's access to games and replaced his favorite servants for this.

Peter's relationship with his wife did not work out from the very beginning. Catherine noted in her memoirs that her husband “bought German books, but what kind of books? Some of them consisted of Lutheran prayer books, and the other - from the stories and trials of some robbers with high road who were hung and wheeled."

It is believed that until the early 1750s there was no marital relationship between husband and wife, but then Peter underwent some kind of operation (presumably circumcision to eliminate phimosis), after which in 1754 Catherine gave birth to his son Pavel. At the same time, a letter from the Grand Duke to his wife, dated December 1746, indicates that the relationship between them was immediately after the marriage: “Madame, I ask you not to bother yourself to sleep with me this night, because it’s too late to deceive me , the bed has become too narrow, after a two-week separation from you, this afternoon your unfortunate husband, whom you have not honored with this name. Peter".

Historians cast great doubt on the paternity of Peter, calling S. A. Poniatovsky the most probable father. However, Peter officially recognized the child as his own.

The infant heir, the future Russian Emperor Paul I, was taken away from his parents immediately after birth, and Empress Elizaveta Petrovna herself took up his upbringing. Pyotr Fedorovich was never interested in his son and was quite satisfied with the permission of the Empress to see Paul once a week. Peter was increasingly moving away from his wife, his favorite was Elizaveta Vorontsova, sister of E.R. Dashkova.

Elizaveta Vorontsova - mistress of Peter III

Nevertheless, Catherine noted that for some reason the Grand Duke always had an involuntary trust in her, all the more strange that she did not strive for spiritual intimacy with her husband. In difficult situations, financial or economic, he often turned to his wife for help, calling her ironically "Madame la Ressource" ("Madame Help").

Peter never hid his hobbies for other women from his wife. But Catherine did not feel humiliated by this state of affairs, having by that time a huge number of lovers. For the Grand Duke, his wife's hobbies were also no secret.

After the death of Choglokov in 1754, General Brockdorf, who had arrived incognito from Holstein, became de facto the manager of the "small court", who encouraged the heir's militaristic habits. In the early 1750s, he was allowed to issue a small detachment of Holstein soldiers (by 1758 their number was about one and a half thousand). Peter and Brockdorf spent all their free time doing military exercises and maneuvers with them. Some time later (by 1759-1760) these Holstein soldiers formed the garrison of the amusing fortress Peterstadt, built in the residence of the Grand Duke Oranienbaum.

Another hobby of Peter was playing the violin.

During the years spent in Russia, Peter never made any attempts to get to know the country, its people and history better, he neglected Russian customs, behaved inappropriately during church services, and did not observe fasts and other rituals. When in 1751 the Grand Duke learned that his uncle had become Swedish king, he said: "They dragged me into this accursed Russia, where I must consider myself a state prisoner, whereas if they had left me free, now I would sit on the throne of a civilized people."

Elizaveta Petrovna did not allow Peter to participate in solving political issues, and the only position in which he could at least somehow prove himself was the position of director of the gentry corps. Meanwhile, the Grand Duke openly criticized the activities of the government, and during the Seven Years' War publicly expressed sympathy for the Prussian King Frederick II.

The defiant behavior of Pyotr Fedorovich was well known not only at court, but also in the wider strata of Russian society, where the Grand Duke did not enjoy either authority or popularity.

Personality of Peter III

Jacob Shtelin wrote about Peter III: “He is rather witty, especially in disputes, which developed and was supported in him from his youth by the grumpiness of his chief marshal Brummer ... By nature, he judges quite well, but attachment to sensual pleasures more upset than developed him judgment, and therefore he disliked deep reflection. Memory - excellent to the last detail. He willingly read descriptions of travels and military books. As soon as a catalog of new books came out, he read it and noted for himself the many books that made up a decent library. He ordered the library of his late parent from Kiel and bought Melling's engineering and military library for a thousand rubles.

In addition, Shtelin wrote: “Being a Grand Duke and not having a place for a library in his St. Petersburg palace, he ordered it to be transported to Oranienbaum and kept a librarian with her. Having become emperor, he instructed the state councilor Shtelin, as his chief librarian, to arrange a library on the mezzanine of his new winter palace in St. Petersburg, for which four large rooms and two for the librarian himself were assigned. For this, in the first case, he appointed 3,000 rubles, and then annually 2,000 rubles, but demanded that not a single Latin book be included in it, because Latin was sick of him from childhood from pedantic teaching and coercion ...

He was not a hypocrite, but he did not like any jokes about faith and the word of God. He was somewhat inattentive during external worship, often forgetting the usual bows and crosses and talking with the ladies-in-waiting and other people around him.

The Empress did not like such actions very much. She expressed her grief to the Chancellor, Count Bestuzhev, who, on her behalf, in similar and many other cases, instructed me to give serious instructions to the Grand Duke. This was done with all diligence, usually on Mondays, regarding such indecency of his actions, both in church and at court or at other public meetings. He was not offended by such remarks, because he was convinced that I wished him well and always advised him how to please Her Majesty as much as possible and thereby make up his happiness ...

Alien to any prejudices and superstitions. The thought concerning faith was more a Protestant than a Russian; therefore, from childhood, he often received admonitions not to show such thoughts and show more attention and respect for worship and for the rites of faith.

Stehlin noted that Peter "always had with him a German Bible and a Kiel prayer book, in which he knew by heart some of the best spiritual songs." At the same time: “I was afraid of a thunderstorm. In words he was not at all afraid of death, but in fact he was afraid of any danger. He often boasted that he would not stay back in any battle, and that if a bullet hit him, he was sure that she was assigned to him, ”Shtelin wrote.

Reign of Peter III

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1761 (January 5, 1762), at three o'clock in the afternoon, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna died. Peter ascended the throne of the Russian Empire. Imitating Frederick II, Peter was not crowned, but planned to be crowned after the campaign against Denmark. As a result, Peter III was crowned posthumously by Paul I in 1796.

Peter III did not have a clear political program actions, but he developed his own vision of politics, and he, imitating his grandfather Peter I, planned to carry out a series of reforms. On January 17, 1762, at a meeting of the Senate, Peter III announced his plans for the future: acts against the nobles."

Several months in power revealed the contradictory nature of Peter III. Almost all contemporaries noted such character traits of the emperor as a thirst for activity, tirelessness, kindness and gullibility.

Among the most important reforms of Peter III:

Abolition of the Secret Office (Office of Secret Investigations; Manifesto of February 16, 1762);
- the beginning of the process of secularization of church lands;
- encouragement of commercial and industrial activity by creating the State Bank and issuing banknotes (Nominal Decree of May 25);
- adoption of a decree on freedom of foreign trade (Decree of March 28); it also contains a demand for a careful attitude to forests as one of the most important wealth of Russia;
- a decree authorizing the establishment of factories for the production of sailing fabric in Siberia;
- a decree that qualified the murder of peasants by landowners as "tyrannical torment" and provided for life exile for this;
- stopped the persecution of the Old Believers.

Peter III is also credited with the intention to reform the Russian Orthodox Church according to the Protestant model (In the Manifesto of Catherine II on the occasion of her accession to the throne of June 28 (July 9), 1762, Peter was blamed for this: “Our Greek Church was already extremely exposed to its last danger by the change of the ancient Orthodoxy in Russia and the adoption of an infidel law”) .

Legislative acts adopted during the short reign of Peter III, in many ways became the foundation for the subsequent reign of Catherine II.

The most important document of the reign of Peter Fedorovich - "Manifesto on the Liberty of the Nobility" (Manifesto of February 18 (March 1), 1762), thanks to which the nobility became the exclusive privileged estate of the Russian Empire.

The nobility, being forced by Peter I to obligatory and total duty to serve the state all his life, under Anna Ioannovna, who received the right to retire after 25 years of service, now received the right not to serve at all. And the privileges that were initially granted to the nobility, as a service class, not only remained, but also expanded. In addition to being exempted from service, the nobles received the right to leave the country virtually unhindered. One of the consequences of the Manifesto was that the nobles could now freely dispose of their land holdings, regardless of their attitude to service (the Manifesto passed over in silence the rights of the nobility to their estates; while the previous legislative acts of Peter I, Anna Ioannovna and Elizaveta Petrovna, concerning noble service, linked service duties and landownership rights).

The nobility became as free as a privileged estate in a feudal country can be.

Under Peter III, a wide amnesty was carried out for persons who had been subjected to exile and other punishments in previous years. Among those returned were Empress Anna Ioannovna's favorite E. I. Biron and Field Marshal B. K. Minikh, close to Peter III.

The reign of Peter III was marked by the strengthening of serfdom. The landlords got the opportunity to arbitrarily move the peasants who belonged to them from one county to another; there were serious bureaucratic restrictions on the transition of serfs to the merchant class; during the six months of Peter's reign, about 13 thousand people were distributed from state peasants to serfs (in fact, there were more of them: only men were included in the audit lists in 1762). During these six months, peasant riots arose several times, suppressed by punitive detachments.

The legislative activity of the government of Peter III was extraordinary. During the 186-day reign, judging by the official "Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire", 192 documents were adopted: manifestos, nominal and Senate decrees, resolutions, etc.

Peter III was much more interested in the internal affairs of the war with Denmark: the emperor planned, in alliance with Prussia, to oppose Denmark in order to return Schleswig, taken from her native Holstein, and he himself intended to go on a campaign at the head of the guard.

Immediately upon accession to the throne, Pyotr Fedorovich returned to court most of the disgraced nobles of the previous reign, who were languishing in exile (except for the hated Bestuzhev-Ryumin). Among them was Count Burchard Christopher Munnich, a veteran of palace coups and a master engineer of his time. The Holstein relatives of the emperor were summoned to Russia: Princes Georg Ludwig of Holstein-Gottorp and Peter August Friedrich of Holstein-Beck. Both were promoted to field marshals in view of the war with Denmark; Peter August Friedrich was also appointed governor-general of the capital. Alexander Vilboa was appointed Feldzeugmeister General. These people, as well as the former tutor Jacob Stehlin, who was appointed personal librarian, made up the emperor's inner circle.

Bernhard Wilhelm von der Goltz arrived in St. Petersburg to negotiate a separate peace with Prussia. Peter III valued the opinion of the Prussian envoy so much that he soon began to "run the entire foreign policy of Russia."

Among the negative aspects of the reign of Peter III, the main one is the actual annulment of the results of the Seven Years' War by him. Once in power, Peter III, who did not hide his admiration for Frederick II, immediately stopped hostilities against Prussia and concluded with Prussian king Petersburg peace on extremely unfavorable terms for Russia, returning the conquered East Prussia (which by that time had been an integral part of the Russian Empire for four years) and abandoning all acquisitions during the Seven Years' War, which was practically won by Russia. All the victims, all the heroism of the Russian soldiers were crossed out in one fell swoop, which looked like a real betrayal of the interests of the fatherland and treason.

Russia's withdrawal from the war once again saved Prussia from complete defeat. The peace concluded on April 24 was interpreted by the ill-wishers of Peter III as a true national humiliation, since the long and costly war, by the grace of this admirer of Prussia, literally ended in nothing: Russia did not derive any benefits from its victories. However, this did not prevent Catherine II from continuing what Peter III had begun, and finally the Prussian lands were liberated from the control of the Russian troops and given to Prussia by her. In 1764, Catherine II concluded a new union treaty with Frederick II. However, the role of Catherine in such an end to the Seven Years' War is usually not advertised.

Despite the progressive nature of many legislative measures and the unprecedented privileges of the nobility, Peter's poorly thought out foreign policy acts, as well as his harsh actions against the church, the introduction of the Prussian order in the army not only did not add to his authority, but deprived him of any social support. In court circles, his policy only gave rise to uncertainty about the future.

Finally, the intention to withdraw the guard from Petersburg and send it to an incomprehensible and unpopular Danish campaign served " last straw”, a powerful catalyst for a conspiracy that arose in the guard against Peter III in favor of Ekaterina Alekseevna.

Death of Peter III

The origins of the conspiracy date back to 1756, that is, at the time of the start of the Seven Years' War and the deterioration of the health of Elizabeth Petrovna. The all-powerful Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin, knowing full well about the pro-Prussian sentiments of the heir and realizing that under the new sovereign he was threatened at least by Siberia, hatched plans to neutralize Pyotr Fedorovich upon his accession to the throne, declaring Catherine an equal co-ruler. However, Alexei Petrovich fell into disgrace in 1758, hastening to implement his plan (the intentions of the chancellor remained undisclosed, he managed to destroy the dangerous papers). The Empress herself had no illusions about her successor on the throne and later thought about replacing her nephew with Paul's great-nephew.

Over the next three years, Catherine, who also fell under suspicion in 1758 and almost ended up in a monastery, did not take any noticeable political actions, except that she stubbornly increased and strengthened personal ties in high society.

In the ranks of the guard, a conspiracy against Pyotr Fedorovich took shape in recent months the life of Elizaveta Petrovna, thanks to the activities of the three Orlov brothers, the officers of the Izmailovsky regiment, the brothers Roslavlev and Lasunsky, the Transfigurationists Passek and Bredikhin, and others. Among the highest dignitaries of the Empire, the most enterprising conspirators were N. I. Panin, tutor of the young Pavel Petrovich, M. N. Volkonsky and K. G. Razumovsky, Ukrainian hetman, president of the Academy of Sciences, favorite of his Izmailovsky regiment.

Elizaveta Petrovna died without daring to change anything in the fate of the throne. Catherine did not consider it possible to carry out a coup immediately after the death of the Empress: she was at the end of her fifth month of pregnancy (dated; in April 1762 she gave birth to her son Alexei). In addition, Catherine had political reasons not to rush things, she wanted to attract as many supporters as possible to her side for a complete triumph. Knowing well the character of her husband, she rightly believed that Peter would set the entire metropolitan society against him soon enough.

To carry out the coup, Catherine chose to wait for the right moment.

The position of Peter III in society was precarious, but the position of Catherine at court was also fragile. Peter III openly said that he was going to divorce his wife in order to marry his favorite Elizaveta Vorontsova. He treated his wife rudely, and on June 9, during a gala dinner on the occasion of the conclusion of peace with Prussia, there was a public scandal. The emperor, in the presence of the court, diplomats and foreign princes, shouted “folle” (fool) to his wife across the table. Catherine wept. The reason for the insult was Catherine's unwillingness to drink while standing, proclaimed by Peter III toast. The hostility between the spouses reached its climax. On the evening of the same day, he gave the order to arrest her, and only the intervention of Field Marshal Georg of Holstein-Gottorp, the emperor's uncle, saved Catherine.

By May 1762, the change of mood in the capital became so obvious that the emperor was advised from all sides to take measures to prevent a catastrophe, there were denunciations about a possible conspiracy, but Pyotr Fedorovich did not understand the seriousness of his situation. In May, the court, led by the emperor, as usual, left the city, to Oranienbaum. There was a calm in the capital, which greatly contributed to the final preparations of the conspirators.

The Danish campaign was planned for June. The emperor decided to postpone the march of the troops in order to celebrate his name day. On the morning of June 28 (July 9), 1762, on the eve of Peter's Day, Emperor Peter III with his retinue set off from Oranienbaum, his country residence, to Peterhof, where a solemn dinner was to be held in honor of the emperor's namesake.

On the eve of St. Petersburg, there was a rumor that Catherine was being held under arrest. The strongest turmoil began in the guard, one of the participants in the conspiracy, Captain Passek, was arrested. The Orlov brothers feared that there was a threat of disclosure of the conspiracy.

In Peterhof, Peter III was supposed to be met by his wife, who, on the duty of the empress, was the organizer of the celebrations, but by the time the court arrived, she had disappeared. Through a short time it became known that Catherine fled to St. Petersburg early in the morning in a carriage with Alexei Orlov - he arrived in Peterhof to Catherine with the news that events had taken a critical turn and it was no longer possible to delay).

In the capital, the guards, the Senate and the Synod, the population swore allegiance to the "Empress and Autocrat of All Russia" in a short time. The guards marched towards Peterhof.

Peter's further actions show an extreme degree of confusion. Rejecting Minich's advice to immediately head to Kronstadt and fight, relying on the fleet and the army loyal to him, stationed in East Prussia, he was going to defend himself in Peterhof in a toy fortress built for maneuvers with the help of a detachment of Holsteiners. However, having learned about the approach of the guards led by Catherine, Peter abandoned this thought and sailed to Kronstadt with the whole court, ladies, etc. But Kronstadt had already sworn allegiance to Catherine. After that, Peter completely lost heart and, again rejecting Minich's advice to go to the East Prussian army, returned to Oranienbaum, where he signed the abdication.

The circumstances of the death of Peter III have not yet been finally clarified.

The deposed emperor on June 29 (July 10), 1762, almost immediately after the coup, accompanied by a guard of guards led by A.G. Orlov was sent to Ropsha, 30 versts from St. Petersburg, where he died a week later, on July 6 (17), 1762. According to the official version, the cause of death was an attack of hemorrhoidal colic, aggravated by prolonged use of alcohol and diarrhea. At the autopsy, which was carried out on the orders of Catherine, it was found that Peter III had a pronounced dysfunction of the heart, inflammation of the intestines and signs of apoplexy.

However, according to another version, Peter's death is considered violent and Alexei Orlov is called the killer. This version is based on Orlov's letter to Ekaterina from Ropsha, which has not been preserved in the original. This letter has come down to us in a copy made by F.V. Rostopchin. The original letter was allegedly destroyed by Emperor Paul I in the early days of his reign. Recent historical and linguistic studies refute the authenticity of the document and call Rostopchin himself the author of the fake.

A number of modern medical examinations, based on surviving documents and evidence, revealed that Peter III suffered from bipolar disorder with a mild depressive phase, suffered from hemorrhoids, which made him unable to sit in one place for a long time. Microcardia found at autopsy usually suggests a complex of congenital developmental disorders.

Initially, Peter III was buried without any honors on July 10 (21), 1762 in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, since only crowned persons were buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the imperial tomb. Senate in in full force asked the Empress not to attend the funeral. According to some reports, Catherine nevertheless came to the Lavra incognito and paid her last debt to her husband.

In 1796, immediately after the death of Catherine, by order of Paul I, his remains were first transferred to house church Winter Palace and then to the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Peter III was reburied simultaneously with the burial of Catherine II.

At the same time, Emperor Paul personally performed the ceremony of crowning the ashes of his father. The headstones of the buried have the same date of burial (December 18, 1796), which gives the impression that Peter III and Catherine II lived together long years and died on the same day.

On June 13, 2014, the world's first monument to Peter III was erected in the German city of Kiel. This action was initiated by German historian Helena Palmer and the Kiel Royal Society (Kieler Zaren Verein). The composition was sculpted by Alexander Taratynov.

Imposters under the name of Peter III

Peter III became the absolute champion in the number of impostors who tried to take the place of the untimely deceased tsar. According to the latest data, in Russia alone there were about forty false Peters III.

In 1764, Anton Aslanbekov, a bankrupt Armenian merchant, acted as the false Peter. Detained with a false passport in the Kursk district, he declared himself emperor and tried to raise the people in his defense. The impostor was punished with whips and sent to an eternal settlement in Nerchinsk.

Shortly thereafter, the name of the late emperor was appropriated by the fugitive recruit Ivan Evdokimov, who was trying to raise an uprising among the peasants of the Nizhny Novgorod province in his favor, and Nikolai Kolchenko in the Chernihiv region.

In 1765, a new impostor appeared in the Voronezh province, publicly declaring himself emperor. Later, arrested and interrogated, he identified himself as Gavrila Kremnev, a private in the Lant-militia Orlovsky regiment. Having deserted after 14 years of service, he managed to get himself a horse and lure two serfs of the landowner Kologrivov to his side. At first, Kremnev declared himself a “captain in the imperial service” and promised that from now on distillation would be prohibited, and the collection of capitation money and recruitment would be suspended for 12 years, but after a while, prompted by accomplices, he decided to announce his “royal name”. For a short time, Kremnev was successful, the nearest villages greeted him with bread and salt and bell ringing, a detachment of five hundred people gradually gathered around the impostor. However, the untrained and unorganized gang fled at the very first shots. Kremnev was captured and sentenced to death penalty, but was pardoned by Catherine and sent to an eternal settlement in Nerchinsk, where his traces are finally lost.

In the same year, shortly after the arrest of Kremnev, in Sloboda Ukraine, in the Kupyanka settlement of the Izyum district, a new impostor appeared - Pyotr Fedorovich Chernyshev, a runaway soldier of the Bryansk regiment. This impostor, unlike his predecessors, who was captured, convicted and exiled to Nerchinsk, did not leave his claims, spreading rumors that the "father-emperor", who incognito inspected the soldiers' regiments, was mistakenly captured and beaten with whips. The peasants who believed him tried to organize an escape by bringing a horse to the "sovereign" and supplying him with money and provisions for the road. The impostor got lost in the taiga, was caught and severely punished in front of his admirers, sent to Mangazeya for eternal work, but died on the way there.

In the Iset province, the Cossack Kamenshchikov, previously convicted of many crimes, was sentenced to cutting out his nostrils and eternal exile to work in Nerchinsk for spreading rumors that the emperor was alive, but imprisoned in the Trinity Fortress. At the trial, he showed as his accomplice the Cossack Konon Belyanin, who was allegedly preparing to act as emperor. Belyanin escaped with whips.

In 1768, the second lieutenant of the Shirvan army regiment, Iosafat Baturin, who was kept in the Shlisselburg fortress, in conversations with the soldiers on duty, assured that “Peter Fedorovich was alive, but in a foreign land,” and even with one of the watchmen he tried to convey a letter for the supposedly hiding monarch. By chance, this episode reached the authorities, and the prisoner was sentenced to eternal exile in Kamchatka, from where he later managed to escape, taking part in the famous enterprise of Moritz Benevsky.

In 1769, a runaway soldier Mamykin was caught near Astrakhan, who publicly announced that the emperor, who, of course, managed to escape, "would again accept the kingdom and would benefit the peasants."

An extraordinary personality turned out to be Fedot Bogomolov, a former serf who fled and joined the Volga Cossacks under the name Kazin. In March-June 1772, on the Volga, in the Tsaritsyn region, when his colleagues, due to the fact that Kazin-Bogomolov seemed to them too quick-witted and smart, suggested that the emperor was hiding in front of them, Bogomolov easily agreed with his "imperial dignity". Bogomolov, following his predecessors, was arrested, sentenced to tearing out his nostrils, branding and eternal exile. On the way to Siberia, he died.

In 1773, the robber ataman Georgy Ryabov, who had fled from Nerchinsk penal servitude, tried to impersonate the emperor. His supporters later joined the Pugachevites, declaring that their dead ataman and leader peasant war- the same person. The captain of one of the battalions stationed in Orenburg, Nikolai Kretov, unsuccessfully tried to declare himself emperor.

In the same year, the Don Cossack, whose name has not been preserved in history, decided to extract monetary benefits for himself from the widespread belief in the "hiding emperor." His accomplice, posing as the secretary of state, traveled around the Tsaritsyn district Astrakhan province, taking oaths and preparing the people for the reception of the "father-king", then the impostor himself appeared. The duo managed to profit enough at someone else's expense before the news reached the other Cossacks, and they decided to give everything a political aspect. A plan was developed to capture the town of Dubovka and arrest all the officers. The authorities became aware of the conspiracy, and one of the high-ranking military, accompanied by a small convoy, arrived at the hut where the impostor was, hit him in the face and ordered him to be arrested along with his accomplice. The Cossacks who were present obeyed, but when the arrested were brought to Tsaritsyn for trial and reprisal, rumors immediately spread that the emperor was in custody, and dull unrest began. To avoid an attack, the prisoners were forced to be kept outside the city, under heavy escort. During the investigation, the prisoner died, that is, from the point of view of the inhabitants, he again "disappeared without a trace."

In 1773, the future leader of the peasant war, Emelyan Pugachev, the most famous of the false Peters III, skillfully turned this story in his favor, assuring that he himself was the "disappeared emperor from Tsaritsyn".

In 1774, another candidate for emperor, a certain Metelka, was caught. In the same year, Foma Mosyagin, who also tried to try on the "role" of Peter III, was arrested and deported to Nerchinsk after the rest of the impostors.

In 1776, the peasant Sergeev paid the same price, gathering around him a gang that was going to rob and burn the landowners' houses. The governor of Voronezh, Ivan Potapov, who not without difficulty managed to defeat the peasant freemen, during the investigation determined that the conspiracy was extremely extensive - at least 96 people were involved in it to one degree or another.

In 1778, a drunken soldier of the Tsaritsyno 2nd Battalion, Yakov Dmitriev, told everyone in the bathhouse that “in the Crimean steppes, the former third emperor Pyotr Feodorovich is with the army, who had previously been kept under guard, from where he was stolen by the Don Cossacks; under him, the Iron Forehead leads that army, against which there was already a battle on our side, where two divisions were beaten, and we expect him as a father; and Pyotr Alexandrovich Rumyantsev stands with the army on the border and does not defend against him, but says that he does not want to defend from any side. Dmitriev was interrogated under batogs, and he stated that he heard this story "in the street from unknown people." The Empress agreed with the Prosecutor General A.A. Vyazemsky, that nothing but drunken dashing and stupid chatter was behind this, and the soldier punished by the batogs was accepted into his former service.

In 1780, after the suppression of the Pugachev rebellion, the Don Cossack Maxim Khanin in the lower reaches of the Volga again tried to raise the people, posing as "the miracle of the saved Pugachev." The number of his supporters began to grow rapidly, among them were peasants and village priests, panic began among the authorities. On the Ilovla River, the applicant was captured and taken to Tsaritsyn. Astrakhan Governor-General I.V., who specially arrived to conduct the investigation. Jacobi subjected the prisoner to interrogation and torture, during which Khanin confessed that back in 1778 he had met in Tsaritsyn with his friend by the name of Oruzheinikov, and this friend convinced him that Khanin was “exactly” similar to Pugachev “Peter”. The impostor was shackled and sent to the Saratov prison.

His own Peter III was in the scopal sect - they were its founder Kondraty Selivanov. Rumors about his identity with the "hidden emperor" Selivanov prudently did not confirm, but did not refute either. There is a legend that he met with Paul I in 1797, and when the emperor inquired, not without irony, “Are you my father?” Selivanov allegedly replied, “I am not a father to sin; accept my deed (castration), and I will recognize you as my son. It is only known for certain that Paul ordered the skopsky prophet to be placed in a charity house for the insane at the Obukhov hospital.

The Lost Emperor appeared at least four times abroad and enjoyed considerable success there. For the first time, it appeared in 1766 in Montenegro, which at that time was fighting for independence against the Turks of the Venetian Republic. This man named Stefan, who appeared from nowhere and became a village healer, never declared himself emperor, but a certain captain Tanovich, who had previously been in St. from Orthodox monasteries and came to the conclusion that the original is very similar to its image. A high-ranking delegation was sent to Stephen with requests to take power over the country, but he flatly refused until internal strife was stopped and peace was made between the tribes. Unusual demands finally convinced the Montenegrins of his "royal origin" and, despite the resistance of the Church and the intrigues of the Russian general Dolgorukov, Stefan became the ruler of the country.

He never revealed his real name, providing Yu.V. Dolgoruky has three versions to choose from - "Raichevich from Dalmatia, a Turk from Bosnia, and finally a Turk from Ioannina." Openly recognizing himself as Peter III, he, however, ordered to call himself Stefan and went down in history as Stefan the Small, which is believed to come from the signature of the impostor - "Stefan, small with small, kind with good, evil with evil." Stefan turned out to be an intelligent and knowledgeable ruler. In the short time that he remained in power, internecine strife ceased. After a short friction, friendly relations were established with Russia, and the country confidently defended itself against the onslaught of both the Venetians and the Turks. This could not please the conquerors, and Turkey and Venice repeatedly attempted on Stephen's life. Finally, one of the attempts was successful and after five years of reign, Stefan the Small was stabbed to death in his sleep by his own doctor, Stanko Klasomunya, who was bribed by the Skadar pasha. The things of the impostor were sent to Petersburg, and his associates tried to get a pension from Catherine for "valiant service to her husband."

After the death of Stephen the ruler of Montenegro and Peter III, in once more“Miraculously escaped from the hands of the murderers,” a certain Stepan Zanovich tried to declare himself, but his attempt was not crowned with success. After leaving Montenegro, Zanovich from 1773 corresponded with the monarchs, kept in touch with Voltaire and Rousseau. In 1785 in Amsterdam, a swindler was arrested and slit his wrists.

Count Mocenigo, who at that time was on the island of Zante in the Adriatic, wrote about another impostor in a report to the Doge of the Venetian Republic. This impostor operated in Turkish Albania, in the vicinity of the city of Arta.

The last impostor was arrested in 1797.

The image of Peter III in the cinema:

1934 - The Dissolute Empress (actor Sam Jaffe as Peter III)
1934 - The Rise of Catherine the Great (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.)
1963 - Catherine of Russia (Caterina di Russia) (Raul Grassili)

This article will focus on the mysterious death of the deposed Russian Emperor Peter III - the grandson of Peter the Great, husband Catherine II and Father Paul I.
Until now, there are two main versions about the death of Emperor Peter III:
main - claims that a murder was committed in Ropsha (A.G. Orlov and F.S. Baryatinsky are traditionally considered the main killers);
secondary - does not exclude the death of Peter III due to illness.
The lack of sources still does not allow filling the gap about what happened in Ropsha and it is filled with the speculations of one or another author, however, the mysterious death of Peter III gives reason to suspect Catherine II of the murder of her husband...
So, everything is in order ...
June 29, 1796, the day after palace coup, Peter III signed the abdication, after which he was taken to Peterhof.
On the way, he fainted. Here is how the French diplomat Rulier describes this event: “As soon as the army saw him, then unanimous cries: “Long live Catherine!” - resounded from different directions, and among these new exclamations, furiously repeated, having passed all the regiments, he lost his memory. 4
Danish diplomat Andreas Schumacher makes an addition: "The Emperor barely escaped the danger of being blown to pieces by a shot from a single Shuvalov howitzer." 6
The officer hit the gunner with a sword on the arm and he dropped the wick, which saved the deposed emperor from death ...
Already in Peterhof, with the favorite of Peter III Vorontsova, when she got out of the carriage, the soldiers cut off the signs orders Saint Catherine. The emperor himself, when he was left alone, was ordered by the soldiers to undress and he “... tore off his ribbon, sword and dress, saying: “Now I am in your hands.” For several minutes he sat in a shirt, barefoot, to ridicule the soldiers ... "4
“The officers who were assigned to guard him insulted him in the most rude way ...
I am assured that the unbridled soldiers with particular malice took revenge on the prisoner for all the stupidity and absurdities done by Peter III, ”this is already from a report to Paris by the French diplomat Laurent Beranger.
Nikita Panin, one of the conspirators and tutor of Tsarevich Pavel, personally selected "a battalion of three hundred people" to guard the deposed emperor, "in order to avert drunken and tired soldiers from the possibility of assassination."

The deposed Emperor Peter III, almost on his knees, begged Panin to leave his favorite Elizaveta Vorontsova with him, but he was refused ...
Why was the deposed Peter III sent from Peterhof to Ropsha, and why did Catherine II not see him?
This can be explained by the situation that reigned in Peterhof after the coup, as Catherine herself well testifies in one of her letters to her former heart friend Stanislav Poniatovsky.
Here is what she writes: "Since it was the 29th, St. Peter's Day, a grand dinner at noon was necessary." However, while it was being cooked and covered holiday tables, it seemed to the soldiers that one of the nobles was trying to reconcile Catherine II with her husband brought to the residence. Suspicions fell on the old Field Marshal Nikita Yuryevich Trubetskoy, whom the guards did not like.
“They began to pester everyone who passed by - the hetman, the Orlovs” and demanded the empress. The soldier's logic was very simple: Prince Trubetskoy is trying, "so that you die - and we are with you, but we will tear him to pieces."
Catherine emphasized that these were “their true words” and she ordered the field marshal to leave immediately, while she herself would “go around the troops on foot”, and he “rushed off into the city in horror” 3 .
Importantly, Trubetskoy had no doubts that the threat would be carried out, and Catherine II herself considered it feasible, since she went personally to calm the regiments. Who knows how events would have developed if the guards had found out that "Mother" was meeting with the deposed emperor?
The soldiers can be understood: peace could still be reborn in the august couple, and violators of the oath would have to pay with their heads. Therefore, one rumor would be enough to provoke the "dying with fear", intoxicated mass to reprisal.
Then it would be "torn to pieces" no longer Trubetskoy ...
To prevent reprisals against the deposed emperor, Catherine sent Peter, accompanied by Alexei Orlov, four officers and a detachment of carefully selected soldiers to Ropsha, as she herself wrote, “to a place ... secluded and very pleasant” ...
However, the situation in Peterhof was not the only reason; there was another reason for the empress's refusal to meet with her husband. Before his abdication, Peter Fedorovich was given specific promises regarding his future.
“Peter, giving himself up voluntarily into the hands of his wife, was not without hope,” 3 remarked the secretary of the French embassy, ​​Claude Rulière.
In particular, Peter III believed that he would be released to Holstein, but the empress herself did not make any promises, and already on June 29 in Peterhof she decided not to let her husband go to Germany, but to imprison him in Shlisselburg ...
Therefore, Catherine II was in no hurry to meet her husband, since she would have to either confirm her obligations or refuse. The refusal could have aroused a storm of emotions in Peter, and he should have been sent away from the residence as soon as possible and without scandal, where the safety of the monarch was not guaranteed in any way.
At this time, the deposed Emperor Peter III was in an extremely difficult condition, since the coup had a terrible effect on the faint of heart and very sensitive Peter.
None of the observers, no matter how he felt about what was happening, did not report that the folded emperor behaved courageously or even with dignity.

The Austrian ambassador, Count Marcy d'Argento, reported to Vienna the following: "In the world stories there is no example that the sovereign, losing his crown and scepter, showed so little courage and good spirits as he, the king, who always tried to speak so arrogantly; when he was deposed from the throne, he acted so softly and cowardly that it is impossible even to describe. 2
Ropsha Manor, which Catherine II chose to support her deposed husband, belonged to Hetman Kirill Grigoryevich Razumovsky. The house was not large and consisted of an elongated suite of rooms on either side of the central hall. Two of them were taken to the prisoner, placing a couple of officers in his chambers - one at each door.
Soldiers guarded the outside of the building.
There is every reason to believe that Catherine, sending the accompanying guard team, instructed her superior and officers on the need for a civilized treatment of the prisoner. eleven

On the evening of June 29, 1762, the deposed emperor arrived at the place of detention. Only one footman, Aleksey Maslov, remained with him, and the other two, in order not to accompany the deposed gentleman, said they were sick.
On June 30, the emperor began to suffer from hemorrhoidal colic due to nerves, which he had suffered for a long time.
Added to this was an upset stomach. The day before, he ate practically nothing, while in Peterhof, according to Schumacher, he drank only a glass of wine mixed with water.
“When he appeared in Ropsha, he was already weak and pathetic. He immediately stopped cooking food, which usually manifested itself several times a day, and he began to be tormented by almost continuous headaches.
Peter had a very strict regime content: he was not allowed to walk in the garden, or even look out into the yard. The windows were constantly covered, and access to the adjacent room was also prohibited.
Even the prisoner had to relieve himself in the presence of a sentry, which was especially difficult and humiliating with diarrhea ...
Further, Schumacher reports another case of mockery of Peter III.
“One evening ... he was playing cards with Orlov. Having no money, he asked Orlov to give him some. Orlov took an imperial from his purse and handed it to the emperor, adding that he could get as many of them as he needed.
The emperor... immediately asked if he could take a little walk in the garden, get some fresh air. Orlov answered “yes” and went forward, as if in order to open the door, but at the same time the guard blinked, and she immediately drove the emperor back into the room with bayonets.
This made the sovereign so excited that he cursed the day of his birth and the hour of his arrival in Russia, and then began to weep bitterly.
The official version of the death of Peter III was set out in the Manifesto on July 7, 1762: “We declare through this to all faithful subjects. On the seventh day after the assumption of Our All-Russian Throne, We received the news that the former Emperor Peter the Third, with an ordinary and previously frequent hemorrhoid attack, fell into the most severe colic ...
To Our extreme regret and confusion of heart, yesterday We received another [news] that he died by the will of the Most High God. Why did We order his body to be transferred to the Nevsky Monastery, for burial.
What happened in Ropsha?
“Mother, gracious Empress. How can I explain, describe what happened: you will not believe your faithful servant, 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, Empress, a disaster happened. We were drunk and so was he. He argued at the table with Prince Fyodor, before we had time to separate him, he was already gone.
We ourselves do not remember what we did; but everyone is guilty, worthy of execution.
Have mercy on me though for a brother.
I brought you a confession, and there is nothing to look for.
Forgive me or tell me to finish soon.
The world is not sweet, they angered you and ruined your souls forever.
This letter, allegedly written by Alexei Orlov to Catherine II of Ropsha and preserved only in copy, is very long time was considered a description of the true cause of the death of Peter III.
After all, in fact, this is a very emotional text and Orlov described the accident itself, clearly not understanding how it happened ...
A. B. Kamensky, the biographer of Catherine II, reconstructed the course of events as follows: during lunch, a quarrel and a fight ensued between the tipsy guards and the prisoner. By nature, Peter was cowardly and the attack on him by hefty guards should have frightened him to death, which resulted in an apoplexy.
Most likely, Catherine herself internally followed precisely this version, noting in her letter to Poniatowski that on the fourth day Peter III "drank continuously, because he had everything except freedom."

Perhaps angry complaints about the imprisonment, and then attacks on the officers: why they don’t let him walk and oppress him - and served as a pretext for a fight.
In 1768, Catherine II, in a letter to Denis Diderot, made the following conclusion about what had happened: “There was no deceit in all this, but bad behavior famous person without which, of course, nothing could have happened to him.”
But there is one episode in this story that does not fit into this description of what happened. From the second, previous to the last, letter from Alexei Orlov dated July 3, we can conclude that Peter did not get up anymore: “And now he himself is so ill that I don’t think he will live until the evening, and almost completely unconscious.”
And then suddenly a feast, "continuous" drinking. With whom, with a person in a state of unconsciousness?
Therefore, quite rightly, the question arises: was there a meal?
And this is where Rulier's version, which explains everything, comes to the rescue: Alexei Orlov and State Councilor Grigory Nikolaevich Teplov, an entourage of Hetman Razumovsky, first tried to poison Peter III, and then strangled him.
It happened like this: they “came together to the unfortunate sovereign and announced that they intended to dine with him. As usual, the Russian was given a glass of vodka before dinner, and the one offered to the emperor was filled with poison.
Whether because they were in a hurry to deliver their news, or because the horror of the atrocity compelled them to hurry, in a minute they poured him another.
Already the flames had spread through his veins, and the villainy depicted on their faces aroused suspicion in him - he refused the other; they used violence, and he defended against them ...
Having tied and pulled a napkin around the neck of this unfortunate emperor (while Orlov pressed his chest with both knees and stopped his breath), they strangled him in this way, and he expired in their hands.
This description became known before other sources and was used much more often.
Andreas Schumacher in his "Notes" insisted on his version. According to it, it turned out that “one Swede from the former life company, Shvanovitz, who converted to the Russian faith, was a very large and strong man, with the help of some other people, brutally strangled the emperor with a gun belt.
The fact that this unfortunate sovereign died just such a death was evidenced by the appearance of a lifeless body, whose face was black, as is usually the case with hanged men or strangled ...
We can confidently say that other means were used to kill him from the world, but they failed. So, the state adviser Dr. Kruse prepared a poisoned drink for him, but the emperor did not want to drink it. It is unlikely that I am mistaken, considering this state councilor and the current cabinet secretary of the Empress Grigory Teplov as the main initiators of this murder ...
On July 3, this vile man went to Ropsha to prepare everything for the already decided assassination of the emperor.
On July 4, early in the morning, Lieutenant Prince Baryatinsky arrived from Ropsha and informed Chief Chamberlain Panin that the emperor was dead.
As a result of the hypothesis about the deliberate murder of the deposed Emperor Peter III, the question arose of Catherine's involvement in what happened. After all, being afraid of the restoration of the deposed autocrat on the throne and giving the order to kill him are two different things.
In addition, the murder of Peter III cast a shadow not only on Catherine, but also on the Orlovs, her closest assistants, whose guilt deprived them of love and trust, and, consequently, the support of the soldiers ...
And already on July 31, the Dutch resident Meinerzhagen reported to his homeland that during the next night unrest, Alexei Orlov, who went out to calm the raging soldiers, was scolded and almost beaten. They called him "a traitor and swore that they would never allow him to put on a royal cap."
Although the Dutchman was mistaken - Alexei's brother Grigory dreamed of marriage - this is still a significant example of the attitude towards the Orlovs after the assassination of Peter III: from yesterday's idols they turned into "traitors" ...
“I do not believe,” Beranger wrote on July 23, “that this princess is so cruel-hearted as to be involved in the death of the king. But since the deepest secret will always hide from society the true inspirer of this terrible attempt, suspicions will remain on the empress, who got the fruit of the deed.
Gold words...
Schumacher made an attempt to hint at the “mastermind”: “There is, however, not the slightest probability that it was the Empress who ordered her husband to be killed. His strangulation was no doubt the work of some of those who had entered into a conspiracy against the emperor and now wished to insure themselves forever from the dangers that promised them and the whole new system his life, if it were to continue" 6 .
According to many contemporaries of Catherine II, the death of Peter was beneficial to her, as once and for all removed the question of a potential coup in his favor.
However, as mentioned above, a simple and safe way to destroy the former emperor was during the coup, especially on June 29, after his abdication, upon his arrival in Peterhof. After all, a drunken crowd of soldiers could easily tear apart the deposed emperor, and in this case there would be no one to blame - the subjects rebelled ...
Why didn’t Catherine take advantage of such a convenient and natural opportunity, in terms of writing off responsibility for the murder, but, on the contrary, sent her deposed husband away from the angry mob?
Perhaps Catherine expected to get rid of Peter later, when time will pass, the troops will calm down, and she will be strengthened on the throne?
Everything could be attributed to the poor health of the deposed husband, who could not stand the imprisonment in Shlisselburg ...
There is also a version that Peter III was killed in a situation that threatened his release.
Instructions for the content of Peter III have not been preserved, but similar documents of that time were created in the likeness of the previous ones of the same content. The only royal prisoner before Peter III was Ivan Antonovich, and as a result, Catherine’s decrees to Alexei Orlov regarding the prisoner in Ropsha had to at least partially repeat the instructions for looking after the “nameless convict” Ivan Antonovich ...
In the personal decree of Peter III, Captain Prince Churmanteev was directly told to end Ivan when trying to capture him: “If, beyond our aspirations, someone would dare to take the prisoner away from you, in this case, resist as much as possible and not give the prisoner alive into your hands ".
It seems that a similar clause was provided for in the instructions to Alexei Orlov in relation to Peter III ...
A. B. Kamensky reasoned: "Killing him ... would make sense only in one case - in the event of an acute danger of a counter-coup, but there was clearly no such danger" 9 .
However, many researchers do not agree with him: unrest among the regiments at that time continued and sometimes took on threatening forms.
Rulière wrote: “Six days have already passed since the revolution: and this great event seemed to be over so that no violence left unpleasant impressions ...
But the soldiers were surprised at their act and did not understand what led them to the fact that they deprived the throne of the grandson of Peter the Great and placed his crown on a German woman ...
The sailors, who were not seduced by anything during the riot, publicly reproached the guards in the taverns that they had sold their emperor for beer ...
One night, a crowd of soldiers loyal to the Empress rebelled from empty fear, saying that their mother was in danger. I had to wake her up so they could see her.
The following night, a new indignation, even more dangerous - in a word, while the life of the emperor gave rise to rebellions, they thought that calm could not be expected.
Schumacher also reported on disagreements in the guard units during the coup itself: "A strong rivalry already reigned between the Preobrazhensky and Izmailovsky regiments" 6 .
Returning to the capital, many cooled off. Preobrazhensky Regiment was pushed away from the usual leadership, army units, naval crews and, as it soon turned out, the Artillery Corps did not speak at all.
The situation was full of surprises...

Berenger, in a report on August 10, reported on the decision to eliminate Peter III: “This last decision was made due to the disclosure of the conspiracy and especially because the Preobrazhensky regiment was supposed to rescue Peter III from prison and restore him to the throne.” ten
Today we do not have information whether the diplomat's information corresponded to reality, but it is known that at that time the capital continued to be in a fever.
The mere suspicion of the intention of the Preobrazhenians or another regiment to free the emperor was enough to decide his fate...
Maybe the conspirators settled the matter between themselves, without informing the empress. After all, there was unrest in the regiments, and on the hands there was an instruction with clear instructions.
Teplov went with Kruse and Shvanvich to Ropsha, where he informed Alexei Orlov about the situation in St. Petersburg, which corresponded to the point of the instruction "do not give a living person into your hands."
The information that the Preobrazhensky Regiment was allegedly ready to release the sovereign prompted a denouement...
But it was not good for an officer of noble birth to understand the hand against the king, and Orlov had to ask who would do the job. Kruse and Schwanwich were at the ready. Aleksey let them through to the prisoner, and this was his fault.
Probably, from the point of view of the killers, it would have been easier to give the prisoner a slow-acting poison under the guise of medicine, and leave themselves, leaving Alexei to deal with the consequences. But, apparently, they were in a hurry, because when the instant poison did not work, they strangled the emperor.
Such haste speaks of a threat and, perhaps, the danger of an attack on Ropsha seemed real then.
Beranger writes that he believed that Catherine did not know about what had happened for 24 hours, Schumacher - for three days. Immediately after returning from Peterhof, Catherine II took part in the meetings of the Senate on July 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. Perhaps her absence at the meetings on July 5 confirms the fact that on July 4 she learned about the death of Peter, and on July 5 she did not find the strength to appear before the Senate ...
On July 4, Hetman Razumovsky was appointed to command the St. Petersburg garrison, from which we can conclude that Catherine continued to consider Kirill Grigoryevich a reliable and personally devoted person to her.
On August 9, in a letter to Stanislav Poniatovsky, Catherine reported about her new secretaries of state: “Teplov serves me well,” and on September 12 about Razumovsky and Nikita Ivanovich: “Hetman is with me all the time, and Panin is the most dexterous, most reasonable, my most diligent courtier."
And then briefly: "All are calm, forgiven, show their devotion to the motherland."
Consequently, Empress Catherine II did not consider Teplov, Razumovsky and Panin to be malicious scoundrels.
The situation at that moment served as a justification for their actions.
Catherine II in this story gained precious experience - not all documents can put your name ...
In the historical literature, several versions have been recorded outlining the circumstances of the assassination of the sovereign, but the most curious thing is that not one of the memoirists was an eyewitness to the murder scene.
A copy of A. Orlov's letter appeared 34 years after the death of Peter III, and not a word was said about the original during the life of Catherine.
For more than two centuries, A. Orlov was credited with the unauthorized villainous murder of the overthrown Emperor Peter III, but the publications of recent years by O.A. Ivanov, as well as the manuscript of the 19th-century historian M. Korf, published for the first time under the title “The Braunschweiss Family”, allow us to take a completely different look at not only the copy of A. Orlov’s letter used as a historical document, in which he reported on the murder of Peter III, but also in the last moments of the emperor's life.
AT historical research O.L. Ivanov, which is based on authentic archival materials, notes, letters and memoirs of contemporaries, is given a large number of arguments that allow us to assert that, contrary to the traditional point of view, the well-known letter of A. Orlov, allegedly kept in the casket of Catherine II all her life, is nothing but a fake ...
Here are the main arguments of O.L. Ivanova:
1. The original source (a letter from A. Orlov to Catherine II with a message about the murder of the emperor) was allegedly destroyed immediately after the death of Catherine II, and a copy of the letter taken by F. Rostopchin was also not found (there are lists from it, taken for the Rostopchin copy).
2. The commentary that accompanies the “Rostopchin copy” is silent about the two previous letters of Alexei Orlov, the authenticity of which is not in doubt.
3. In the period from June 29 to July 2, various sources report on the growing morbid condition of Peter.
4. The extremely well-informed Danish envoy Schumacher, whose words were listened to by eminent historians and who was a very interested person in the isolation of Peter III, because military operations against his country, at the behest of Peter, were about to begin, claims that on July 3 in Ropsha was sent Hoff-surgeon Paulsen. But what is most interesting, he did not have medicines, but there were “tools and objects necessary for opening and embalming a dead body”!
5. The spelling of the "copy of Rostopchin" is fundamentally different from the two original previous letters of A. Orlov. In the "copy" is puzzling unacceptably familiar address to the empress on "you".
This fake, which was composed by F. Rostopchin, allowed Paul I on the eve of his own coronation to cleanse the crown of the Russian Empire stained with the blood of his father.
What actually caused the death of the deposed Emperor Peter III now could hardly be said by special medical studies, since no documents on the results of the autopsy have been preserved, and it is not known whether there were such documents at all ...
The body of the former sovereign for parting and worship was brought and exhibited in the chambers that had previously served for the same purpose at the funeral of Anna Leopoldovna and Grand Duchess stillborn Anna Petrovna, daughter of Catherine.
The late Emperor Peter III, who did not even have time to take the necessary Russian kingdom the ceremony of coronation, was dressed "in the light blue uniform of the Holstein dragoons with white lapels", the hands were hidden in leggings, orders decided not to show it to the public.
Some of the eyewitnesses claimed that there were signs of strangulation on Peter's body, but it was forbidden to stop near the coffin, the officers on duty hurried: "come in, come in."
The funeral service was held in the Annunciation Church of the monastery on July 10, and here the remains of Peter were buried, "against the royal doors, immediately behind the grave of Anna Leopoldovna."
Catherine II followed the persistent advice of the Senate, who was concerned about her health, and did not attend the burial of Peter III...

Information sources:
1. Eliseeva "All are calm, forgiven ..."
2. Brikner "History of Catherine II"
3. Poniatowski "Memoirs"
4. Rulier "History and anecdotes of the revolution in Russia in 1762"
5. Site "Kaleidoscope of the secret, unknown and mysterious"
6. Schumacher "History of the deposition and death of Peter III"
7. "Letters from Count A. G. Orlov to Catherine II"
8. Turgenev "Russian court in the XVIII century"
9. Kamensky "Under the canopy of Catherine ..."
10. Collection RIO
11. Polushkin "The Eagles of the Empress"