And Gregory Orloff proved himself as bold in wooing as he was brave in war.  For him there was no stealing up back stairs, no masquerading in disguises.  He was the elect favourite of the future Empress of Russia, and all the world should know it.  He was inseparable from his mistress, and paid his court to her under the eyes of her husband; while Catherine, thus emboldened, made as little concealment of her partiality.

But troublous days were coming to break the idyll of their love.  The Empress Elizabeth, as was inevitable, at last drank herself to death, and her nephew Peter, now a besotted imbecile of thirty-four, put on the Imperial robes, and was free to indulge his madness without restraint.  The first use he made of his freedom was to subject his wife to every insult and humiliation his debased brain could suggest.  He flaunted his amours and vices before her, taunted her in public with her own indiscretions, and shouted in his cups that he would divorce her.

Not content with these outrages on his Empress, he lost no opportunity of disgusting his subjects and driving his soldiers to the verge of mutiny.  Such an intolerable state of things could only have one issue.  The Emperor was undoubtedly mad; the Emperor must go.

Over the coup d’etat which followed we must pass hurriedly—­the conspiracy of Catherine and the Orloffs, the eager response of the army which flocked to the Empress, “kissing me, embracing my hands, my feet, my dress, and calling me their saviour”; the marching of the insurgent troops to Oranienbaum, with Catherine, astride on horseback, at their head; and Peter’s craven submission, when he crawled on his knees to his wife, with whimpering and tears, begging her to allow him to keep “his mistress, his dog, his negro, and his violin.”

The Emperor was safe behind barred doors at Mopsa; Catherine was now Empress in fact as well as name.  Three weeks later Peter was dead; was he done to death by Catherine’s orders?  To this day none can say with certainty.  The story of this tragedy as told by Castera makes gruesome reading.

One day Alexis Orloff and Teplof appeared at Mopsa to announce to the deposed sovereign his approaching deliverance and to ask a dinner of him.  Glasses and brandy were ordered, and while Teplof was amusing the Tsar, Orloff filled the glasses, adding poison to one of them.

“The Tsar, suspecting no harm, took the poison and swallowed it.  He was soon seized with agonising pains.  He screamed aloud for milk, but the two monsters again presented poison to him and forced him to take it.  When the Tsar’s valet bravely interposed he was hurled from the room.  In the midst of the tumult there entered Prince Baratinski, who commanded the Guard.  Orloff, who had already thrown down the Tsar, pressed upon his chest with his own knees, holding him fast at the same time by the throat.  Baratinski and Teplof then passed a table-napkin with a sliding knot round his neck, and the murderers accomplished the work of death by strangling him.”