soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.
But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early
one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.

"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed!"

Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out
the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they
clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately
afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son;
but as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by
the soldiers, as empress in her own right.

It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from
the capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt
would not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to
Ropsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs,
quite of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a
corrosive poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build
and now quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff
seized him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him
till the blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate
man was dead.

Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save
to accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the
foreign ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent
colic. When his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is
said to have oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that
had been placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and
some six years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost
composure. The whole incident was characteristically Russian.

It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of
Catharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her
statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire,
and the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet
these things ought to be remembered first of all when one thi