ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a dramatic narrative of the coup d'État that brought Catherine II to power, a portrait of the empress herself, and an analysis of her foreign conquests and her major internal initiatives. For a long time Catherine remained aloof, patiently enduring her situation and refraining from direct relations with the malcontents. Peter III, who is husband of Catherine II, himself, however, goaded her to action. On the eve of the coup, Catherine counted on her side some 40 officers and 10,000 soldiers of the Guards. In explanation of the enthusiasm the Guards displayed in the coup, Catherine wrote shortly afterward that the lowest Guards soldier regarded her as the work of his own hands. When the agitation stirred up in Petersburg by the coup had subsided, the excesses of the patriotic rejoicing in the streets were glossed over in a solemn document that explained the meaning of the events that had taken place.
