army, the navy, the finances, the punishment of crime
and to foreign affairs, were reported to her by her ministers, and
were guided by her decisions.

There must always be, in every government, an opposition party--that
is, a party who wish to eject from office those in power, that they
themselves may enjoy the loaves and fishes of governmental favor. This
is peculiarly the case in an empire where a large class of haughty
nobles are struggling for the preeminence. Many of the bigoted clergy
were exasperated by the toleration which the empress enjoined, and
they united with the disaffected lords in a conspiracy for a
revolution. The clergy in the provinces had great influence over the
unlettered boors, and the conspiracy soon assumed a very threatening
aspect. The first rising of rebellion was by the wild population
scattered along the banks of the Don. The rebellion was headed by an
impostor, who declared that he was Peter III., and that, having
escaped from those who had attempted his assassination, he had
concealed himself for a long time, waiting for vengeance. This
barbaric chieftain, who was called Pugatshef, very soon found himself
at the head of fourteen thousand fierce warriors, and commenced
ravaging oriental Russia. For a season his march was a constant
victory. Many thousand Siberian exiles escaped from their gloomy
realms and joined his standards. So astonishing was his success, that
even Catharine trembled. Pugatshef waged a war of extermination
against the nobles who were the supporters of Catharine, in cold blood
beheading their wives and children, and conferring their titles and
estates upon his followers. The empress found it necessary to rouse
all her energies to meet this peril. She issued a manifesto, which was
circulated through all the towns of the empire, and raised a large
army, which was dispatched to crush the rebellion. Battle after battle
ensued, until, at last, in a decisive conflict, the hosts of Pugatshef
were utterly cut up.

Still, this indefatigable warrior soon raised another army from the
untamed barbarians of the Don, and, rapidly descending the Volga,
attacked, by surprise, some Russian regiments encamped upon its banks,
and routed them with fearful slaughter. The astronomer, Lovitch, a
member of the imperial academy of sciences at St. Petersburg, was, at
that time, under the protection of these regiments, surveying the
route for a canal between the Don and the Volga. Pugatshef o