Peter III of Russia

Peter III reigned for six months, saved Frederick the Great by accident of admiration, and was deposed and killed by his wife. He was born in Kiel, a grandson of Peter the Great through his mother and a grandnephew of Charles XII of Sweden through his father, and was thus in line for two thrones. His aunt Empress Elizabeth brought him to Russia at fourteen, converted him to Orthodoxy, and married him to a minor German princess who became Catherine. He never learned to like the country. He drilled toy soldiers, kept a Holstein regiment, and made no secret of regarding Frederick II of Prussia as the greatest man alive, at a moment when Russian armies were beating Frederick and had occupied Berlin. When Elizabeth died in January 1762 he came to the throne and immediately made peace with Prussia, returning East Prussia without asking for anything - the reversal known as the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg, which rescued Frederick from a war he was losing. He then prepared to fight Denmark over Schleswig, a Holstein quarrel of no interest to Russia, and ordered the guards regiments into Prussian-style uniforms. In domestic policy his short reign was not negligible: he abolished the secret chancellery, freed the nobility from compulsory state service, and began the secularisation of monastic lands. But he had insulted the guards, the church and his wife, in that order of danger. Catherine took the throne in a coup in July 1762 and Peter signed an abdication without resistance. He died eight days later at Ropsha, officially of haemorrhoidal colic. Half a dozen pretenders afterwards claimed to be him, of whom Pugachev was the most dangerous.

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