[Footnote 17:  Pomerania was one of the duchies of Prussia, where the Russian army, in cooeperation with the King of Prussia, was assembled.  Frederic might, perhaps, have sent his troops to aid Peter in the recovery of his crown.]

The women and the courtiers, with characteristic timidity, remonstrated against a measure so decisive, and, believing that the empress would not be very implacable, entreated the tzar to negotiate rather than fight.  Peter yielded to their senseless solicitations, and ordered them to make immediately for Oranienbaum.  They reached the dock at four o’clock in the morning.  Peter hastened to his apartment, and wrote a letter to the empress, which he dispatched by a courier.  In this letter he made a humble confession of his faults, and promised to share the sovereign authority with Catharine if she would consent to reconciliation.  The empress was, at this time, at the head of her army within about twenty miles of Oranienbaum.  During the night, she had slept for a few hours upon some cloaks which the officers of her suite had spread for her bed.  Catharine, knowing well that perjury was one of the most trivial of the faults of the tzar, made no reply, but pressed forward with her troops.

Peter, soon receiving information of the advance of the army, ordered one of his fleetest horses to be saddled, and dressed himself in disguise, intending thus to effect his escape to the frontiers of Poland.  But, with his constitutional irresolution, he soon abandoned this plan, and, ordering the fortress of Oranienbaum to be dismantled, to convince Catharine that he intended to make no resistance, he wrote to the empress another letter still more humble and sycophantic than the first.  He implored her forgiveness in terms of the most abject humiliation.  He assured her that he was ready to resign to her unconditionally the crown of Russia, and that he only asked permission to retire to his native duchy of Holstein, and that the empress would graciously grant him a pension for his support.

Catharine read the letter, but deigning no reply, sent back the chamberlain who brought it, with a verbal message to her husband that she could enter into no negotiations with him, and could only accept his unconditional submission.  The chamberlain, Ismailof, returned to Oranienbaum.  The tzar had with him there only his Holstein guard consisting of six hundred men.  Ismailof urged the tzar, as the only measure of safety which now remained, to abandon his troops, who could render him no defense, and repair to the empress, throwing himself upon her mercy.  For a short time the impotent mind of the degraded prince was in great turmoil.  But as was to be expected, he surrendered himself to the humiliation.  Entering his carriage, he rode towards Peterhof to meet the empress.  Soon he encountered the battalions on the march for his capture.  Silently they opened their ranks and allowed him to enter, and then, closing around him, they stunned him with shouts of, “Long live Catharine.”