As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of the wildest folly.  It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy of his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything that was German.  His bodyguard was made up of German troops—­thus exciting the jealousy of the Russian soldiers.  He introduced German fashions.  He boasted that his father had been an officer in the Prussian army.  His crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge of sycophancy.

As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity.  He declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was really fathered by Catharine’s lovers.  At a state banquet he turned to Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly forgive—­and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her high spirit and imperial pride.  He thrust his mistresses upon her; and at last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the Countess Vorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.

It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense.  She was accustomed to Peter’s ordinary eccentricities.  On the ground of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to make complaint.  But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad.  If he questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take measures to imprison Catharine or even to destroy her.  Therefore she conferred with the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developed into a conspiracy.

The 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.