ority, as if born to command, she ordered the regiments to march
to different quarters of the city and to seize all the prominent
officers of the government. Then leading, herself, a regiment to the
palace, she took possession of the infant emperor and of his mother,
the regent. They were held in captivity, though, at first, treated
with all the consideration which became their birth.

This revolution was accepted by the people with the loudest
demonstrations of joy. The memory of Peter the Great was enshrined in
every heart, and all exulted in placing the crown upon his daughter's
brow. The next morning, at the head of the royal guards and all the
other troops of the metropolis, Elizabeth was proclaimed Empress of
Russia. In one week from this time, the deposed infant emperor, Ivan,
who was then thirteen months old, was sent, with his parents, from
Petersburg to Riga, where they were for a long time detained in a
castle as prisoners. Two efforts which they made for escape were
frustrated.

This conspiracy, which was carried to so successful a result, was
mainly founded in the hostility with which the Russians regarded the
foreigners who had been so freely introduced to the empire by Peter
the Great, and who occupied so many of the most important posts in the
State. Thus the succession of Elizabeth was, in fact, a counter
revolution, arresting the progress of reform and moving Russia back
again toward the ancient barbarism. But Elizabeth soon expended her
paroxysm of energy, and surrendered herself to luxury and to sensual
indulgence unsurpassed by any debauchee who ever occupied a throne.
Jealous of sharing her power, she refused to take a husband, though
many guilty favorites were received to her utmost intimacy.

The doom of the deposed Ivan and his parents was sad, indeed. They
were removed for safe keeping to an island in the White Sea, fifty
miles beyond Archangel, a region as desolate as the imagination can
well conceive. Here, after a year of captivity, the infant Ivan was
torn from his mother and removed to the monastery of Oranienburg,
where he was brought up in the utmost seclusion, not being allowed to
learn either to read or write. The bereaved mother, Anne, lingered a
couple of years until she wept away her life, and found the repose of
the grave in 1746. Her husband survived thirty years longer, and died
in prison in 1775. It was an awful doom for one who had committed no
crime. The whole course of his