At з a.m., Catherine's column stopped at Krasni-Kabak to rest. She lay down on a narrow, straw bed beside Dashkova, but she did not sleep. The Orlovs pushed ahead with their vanguard. The main body set off again two hours later and were met by the Vice-Chancellor, Prince A. M. Golitsyn, with another offer from Peter. But there was nothing to negotiate except unconditional abdication. The Vice-Chancellor took the oath to Catherine.
Soon the news arrived that Alexei Orlov had taken peaceful possession of the two summer estates, Oranienbaum and Peterhof. At 10 a.m., Peterhof received Catherine as sovereign empress: it was only twenty-four hours since she had left in her lace nightcap. Her lover Grigory Orlov, accompanied by Potemkin, was already at nearby Oranienbaum forcing Peter to sign the unconditional abdication.4 When the name was on the paper, Grigory Orlov brought it back to the Empress. Potemkin remained behind to guard this husk of an emperor.5 A disgusted Frederick the Great, for whom it might be said that Peter III had sacrificed his Empire, remarked that the Emperor 'let himself be driven from the throne as a child is sent to bed'.6
The ex-Emperor was guided into his carriage accompanied by his mistress and two aides. The carriage was surrounded by a guard. Potemkin was among them. The milling troops taunted the convoy with hurrahs of 'Long live the Empress Catherine the Second.'7 At Peterhof, Peter handed over his sword, his ribbon of St Andrew and his Preobrazhensky Guards uniform. He was taken to a room he knew well, where Panin visited him: the ex-Tsar fell to his knees and begged not to be separated from his mistress. When this was refused, an exhausted, weeping Peter asked if he could take his fiddle, his negro Narcissus and his dog Mopsy. 'I consider it one of the great misfortunes of my life that I had to see Peter at that moment,' Panin remembered later, 'the greatest misfortune of my life.'8
Before he could be taken to his permanent home at Schlusselburg, a closed Berline carriage with guards on the running-boards, commanded by Alexei Orlov, transferred the ex-Emperor to his estate at Ropsha (about nineteen miles inland). Potemkin is not mentioned among this guard, but he was there days later, so he was probably present. Catherine granted her husband his fiddle, blackamoor - and dog.9 She never saw Peter again.
A few days later, Princess Dashkova entered Catherine's cabinet and was 'astonished' to see Grigory Orlov 'stretched at full length on a sofa' going through the state papers. 'I asked what he was about. "The Empress has ordered that I open them," he replied.' The new regime was in power.10
Catherine II arrived back in the jubilant capital on 30 June. Now she had won, she had to pay for her victory. Potemkin was among the beneficiaries specified by the Empress herself: no doubt she remembered the sword-knot.
The cost was over a million roubles in a total annual budget of only sixteen million. Her supporters received generous rewards for their roles in the coup: St Petersburg's garrison were given half a year's salary - a total of 225,890 roubles. Grigory Orlov was promised 50,000 roubles; Panin and Razumovsky got pensions of 5,000 roubles. On 9 August, Grigory and Alexei Orlov, Ekaterina Dashkova and the seventeen leading plotters received either 800 souls or 24,000 roubles each.
Grigory Potemkin was among the eleven junior players who received 600 souls or 18,000 roubles.11 He appeared on other lists in Catherine's own handwriting: in one, the Horse-Guards commanders presented their report, suggesting that Potemkin be promoted to cornet. Catherine in her own hand wrote, 'has to be lieutenant', so he was promoted to second lieutenant,12 and she promised him another 10,000 roubles. Catherine left Chancellor Vorontsov in his job, but Nikita Panin became her chief minister. Panin's coterie wanted a regency for Paul, steered by aristocratic oligarchy, but the Orlovs and their Guards protected Catherine's absolute power, which was their sole reason for being in government at all.13 However, the Orlovs had a further plan: the marriage of Grigory Orlov to the Empress. There was a not insurmountable obstacle to this: Catherine was already married.
Peter III, Narcissus and Mopsy remained at Ropsha, guarded by Alexei Orlov and his 300 men, Potemkin among them. Orlov kept Catherine abreast of this awkward situation in a series of hearty, informal yet macabre letters. He mentioned Potemkin by name in these notes, another sign that Catherine was acquainted with him, albeit vaguely. But he concentrated on mocking Peter as the 'freak'. One senses a tightening garotte in Orlov's sinister jokes, as if he was seeking Catherine's approval for his deed before he undertook it.14
She cannot have been surprised to learn around 5 July that Peter had been murdered. The details remain as murky as the deed. All we know is that Alexei Orlov and his myrmidons played their roles and that the ex-Emperor was throttled.15
The death served everyone's ends. Ex-emperors were always living liabilities for their successors in a country plagued by pretenders. Even dead, they could rise again. Peter Ill's mere existence undermined Catherine's usurpation. He also threatened the Orlovs' plans. There was no mistake in his murder. Was Potemkin involved? Since he was to be accused of every imaginable sin in his subsequent career, it is significant that the murder of Peter is never mentioned in connection with him, and this can only mean that he played no part in it. But he was at Ropsha.
Catherine shed bitter tears - for her reputation, not for Peter: 'My glory is spoilt, Posterity will never forgive me.' Dashkova was shocked but was also thinking about herself. 'It is a death too sudden, Madame, for your glory and mine.'16 Catherine appreciated the benefits of the deed. No one was punished. Indeed Alexei Orlov was to play a prominent role for the next thirty years.
But it made Catherine notorious in Europe as an adulterous regicide and marticide.
The Emperor's body lay in state in a plain coffin at the Alexander Nevsky Convent for two days in a blue Holstein uniform without any decorations. A cravat covered its bruised throat and a hat was placed low over its face to hide the blackening caused by strangulation.17
Catherine recovered her composure and issued a much mocked statement blaming Peter's death on 'a haemorrhoidal colic'.18 This absurd if necessary diagnosis was to become a euphemism in Europe for political murder. When Catherine later invited the philosophe d'Alembert to visit her, he joked to Voltaire that he did not dare since he was prone to piles, obviously a very dangerous condition in Russia.19
The tsars of Russia were traditionally crowned in Moscow, the old Orthodox capital. Peter III, with his contempt for his adopted land, had not bothered to be crowned at all. Catherine, the usurper, was not about to make the same mistake. On the contrary, a usurper must follow the rituals of legitimacy down to the smallest detail, whatever the cost. Catherine ordered a lavish, traditional coronation to be arranged as soon as possible.
On 4 August, the very day he was promoted to second lieutenant on the personal order of the Empress, Potemkin was among three squadrons of Horse-Guards who departed for Moscow to attend the coronation. His mother and family still lived there to welcome the homecoming of the prodigal, for he had left as a scapegrace and now returned to guard an empress at her coronation. On the 27th, Grand Duke Paul, aged eight, the sole legitimate pillar of the new regime, accompanied by his Governor Panin with twenty- seven carriages and 257 horses, left the capital, followed by Grigory Orlov. The Empress left five days later with an entourage of twenty-three courtiers, sixty-three carriages and 395 horses. The Empress and the Tsarevich entered Moscow, city of cupolas and towers and old Russia, on Friday, 13 September. She always hated Moscow, where she felt disliked and where she had once fallen gravely ill. Now her prejudice was proved right when little Paul contracted fever, which just held off for the actual ceremony.