Peter III, Emperor of Russia
Robert Nisbet Bain
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910
vol. 21, pg. 291
PETER III. (1728-1762), emperor of Russia, only son of Charles Frederick,
duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and of Anne, eldest surviving daughter of Peter the
Great, was born at Kid on the 21st of February 1728. In December 1741 he was
adopted by his aunt, Elizabeth Petrovna, as soon as she was safely established
on the Russian throne, and on the 18th of November 1742 was received into the
Orthodox Church, exchanging his original name of Karl Peter Ulrich for that of
Peter Fedorovich. On the 21st of August 1745, by the command of his aunt, he
married the princess Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt Zerbst, who exchanged
her name for that of Catherine Aleksyeevna. The union between a prince who
physically was some thing less than a man and mentally little more than a
child, and a princess of prodigious intellect and an insatiable love of
enjoyment, was bound to end in a catastrophe. But there is no foundation for
the stories of Peter's neglect and brutality. It took the spouses five years to
discover that their tastes were divergent and their tempers incompatible. Even
when Peter III. succeeded his aunt on the 5th of January 1762, he paid off all
the debts that Catherine had contracted without inquiring what they were for.
On her birthday, in April, he made her a present of domains worth £10,000
per annum, though he had already readjusted her establishment on a truly
imperial scale. A great deal has been made of Peter's infidelity towards his
consort; but the only one who really suffered from his liaison with the
ugly, stupid and vixenish countess Elizabeth Vorontso'va was the unfortunate
emperor. So far from being scandalized by the juxtaposition of "Das
Friulein" in the Winter Palace, Catherine accepted it as a matter of
course, provided that her own relations with the handsome young guardsman,
Gregory Orlov, were undisturbed. Nor was Peter's behaviour to his consort in
public of the outrageous character we have been led to suppose. Peter, in fact,
was too good-natured and inconsequent to pursue, or even premeditate, any
deliberate course of ill treatment. No personal wrongs, but the deliberate
determination of a strong-minded, capable woman to snatch the reins of
government from the hands of a semi-imbecile, was the cause of Peter's
overthrow, and his stupendous blunders supplied Catherine with her opportunity.
Peter's foreign policy was the absolute reversal of the policy of his
predecessor. He had not been on the throne for two months when he made pacific
overtures to the wellnigh vanquished king of Prussia, whom he habitually
alluded to as " the king my master." Peter's enthusiastic worship of
Frederick resulted in a peace (May 5) and then (June 19) in an offensive and
defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia, whereby Peter restored to
Prussia all the territory won from her by Russia during the last five years at
such an enormous expense of men and money, and engaged to defend Frederick
against all his enemies. This was followed up by a whole series of menacing
rescripts addressed by Peter to the court of Vienna, in which war was
threatened unless Austria instantly complied with all the demands of the king
of Prussia. Finally he picked a quarrel with Denmark for not accepting as an
ultimatum the terms to be submitted by Russia to a peace conference to meet at
Berlin for the purpose of adjusting the differences between the two powers. On
the 6th of July the Russian army received orders to invade Denmark by way of
Mecklenburg. This advance was only arrested, when the opposing forces were
almost within touch of each other, by the tidings that a revolution had taken
place at St Petersburg, and that Peter III. was already a prisoner in the hands
of his consort. The coup d'etat of the 9th of July 1762 properly belongs
to the history of Catherine II. (q.v.). Here only a few words must be said as
to the mysterious death of Peter at the castle of Ropsha, to which he was
removed immediately after his surrender. Here he remained from the evening of
the 9th to the afternoon of the 18th of July. At first Catherine and her
counsellors could not make up their minds what to do with "the former
emperor." Imprisonment in Schlusselburg for life, or repatriation to
Holstein, were proposed only to be rejected as dangerous. The Orlovs had even
stronger motives than Catherine for suppressing the ex-emperor, for Gregory
Orlov aspired to win the hand as well as the heart of his imperial mistress,
and so long as Catherine's lawful husband lived, even in a prison, such a union
would be impossible. The available evidence points to the irresistible
conclusion that on the after- noon of the 18th of July 1762, Peter III., with
his consort's connivance, was brutally murdered at Ropsha by Alexius Orlov,
Theodore Baryatinski, and several other persons still unknown.
See R. N. Bain, Peter III., Emperor of Russia (London, 1902); V. A.
Bilbasov, History of Catherine II. (Rus.), vol. i. (Berlin, 1900). (R.
N. B.)