f the Russian armies
to leave his Austrian allies, and made peace with the King of Prussia
to whom he restored all Russia's conquests. Then he entered into an
alliance with Frederick, which was the means of saving Prussia.

Peter relieved the nobles of the duty of serving the state, for which
they were so grateful that they proposed to erect his statue in gold;
he heard of it, and forbade their doing so. He abolished the Secret
Court of Police, and showed great kindness to the raskols and
permitted many of them to return from Siberia. A host of other exiles
were recalled, and he thought of relieving the hard lot of the
moujiks.

For all this, he was unpopular and disliked. His disregard for old
Russian customs and his mode of life gave deep offense. He was married
to Sophia of Anhalt, who had assumed the name of Catherine; she (p. 184)
was a woman of decided ability and strong character. Peter wanted a
divorce. She heard of it and contrived a conspiracy among the high
nobles and officers of the army and navy. Peter had no thought of
danger, when he ordered the arrest of Passek, a young officer and
favorite of Catherine. Thinking that the conspiracy had been discovered,
she left her palace in the outskirts and came to St. Petersburg where
the three regiments of Foot Guards declared in her favor, and Peter's
uncle was arrested by his own regiment of Horse Guards. When Catherine
entered the Winter Palace, she was sure of the army and navy;
Cronstadt was seized by her supporters, and she issued a proclamation
assuming the government. At the head of 20,000 men, she marched upon
the Palace, where the czar, her husband, was residing.

Peter fled to Cronstadt and sought the Admiral. "I am the czar," he
said. "There is no longer a czar," was the reply, and all Peter could
do was to return to his palace, where he abdicated "like a child being
sent to sleep," as Frederick the Great expressed it. He then called on
his wife, "after which," Catherine tells us, "I sent the deposed
emperor, under the command of Alexis Orlof accompanied by four
officers and a detachment of gentle and reasonable men, to a place
called Ropcha, fifteen miles from Peterhof, a secluded spot, but very
pleasant." Four days later Peter III was dead. Catherine declared that
he died of colic "with the blood flying to the brains."

[Illustration: Catharine II]

But one was living with just and strong claims to the throne. Ivan VI,
the infant czar sent to