For months, Catherine,
together with one of her lovers, had been working with men high
in government and the military to replace what they all saw as a disastrous
and incompetent emperor. Peter. They had slowly been putting out bribes and winning the hearts
of the local guard regiments in St.Petersburg But on the night of June 27, it all came to a head, due to a slip of the tongue. [Intro Music] June 27, 1762 A soldier in one of the guard regiments
in St. Petersburg gets spooked. He turns to one of his officers and asks if it's true that the conspiracy
against the emperor has been found out. Turns out the officer he just asked is one
of the few who was not in on the plot. The soldier is arrested on the spot, as is one of the guard officers
who is central to the rebellion. The time is now,
or never. The revolt must begin. midnight of THE FIRST DAY
- 24 hours remain - The principal conspirators gather, panicked. A man named Panin, a man who would go on to be
one of Catherine's highest officials, stays them, saying their freedom
could only be assured for a few hours, so they must act,
and they must act now. The brother of Catherine's paramour
is dispatched to Peterhof, the palace outside of St. Petersburg
where Catherine is staying. He dashes out and pulls aside
the first carriage he can find. Money makes the driver
push the horses hard through the night. Meanwhile,
Peter is asleep at Oranienbaum, a small post outside of Petersburg
where he is staying to observe one of his regiments before his Danish adventure. dawn of THE FIRST DAY - 19 hours remain - The brother of Catherine's lover arrives
just as Catherine is waking, at 5 A.M. "The time has come," he says. He quickly relays the night's event. Skipping all the elaborate dress
of a high lady of the time, Catherine immediately rushes
to the carriage. The horses are exhausted
from the travel of the previous night, but, as they are crawling down
the road toward the capital, a farm wagon on its way
to morning market passes. They stop it, and the empress' consort
pushes money into the farmer's hand. She has his two great farm horses tethered
to her carriage right then and there, and they speed toward St. Petersburg. Out in the drill yard, Peter is making his small contingent
of Holstein soldiers parade before him. A messenger brings news of the arrest
of the guards and the possible conspiracy. Peter shrugs it off. morning of THE FIRST DAY - 16 hours remain - One by one, Catherine goes to the barracks of each of the guard units stationed in Petersburg. One by one, the regiments swear fealty
to her in a jubilus tumult. Meanwhile,
Peter is playing violin in his room. A man rushes in to tell him he has a message
about happenings in the capital. Annoyed at the interruption, Peter tells the man to put it on the table. He'll read it later. (He never does.) Surrounded by guards, a procession
with Catherine at its center makes its way to the Cathedral
of Our Lady Kazan, where the archbishop of Novgorod pronounces her sovereign autocrat of Russia. Meanwhile, Peter orders a caravan
of carriages assembled to take him and his guest back
to Peterhof to have a feast. He forgets to order
the usual cavalry escort. afternoon of THE FIRST DAY
-8 hours remain - Catherine
and an evergrowing mob precess to the Winter Palace. There she meets
with assembled members of the Senate and the Holy Synod, the highest religious council
of Russia. She declares that, out of love
for Russia and the Orthodox faith, she had been moved
to such action. That, at the urging of her subjects against an emperor who imperiled them, she took the throne to deliver Russia from foreign powers and foreign religion. Which, I mean, bold move considering she herself was a foreigner
who had come to Russia with a foreign religion but, hey. Nobody was really sweating
the details at the time. Meanwhile, Peter's group of revellers arrive
at Peterhof, only to find no one there. Peter is furious. He storms through the house,
looking for Catherine. She spoiled his party. To one of his entourage, he screams
in rage at her unthinking discourtesy. "Did I always tell you
she was capable of anything!?" A few of the more senior members
of the party offered to head to St. Petersburg to see if they could find her. They had probably put two
and two together by this point. evening of THE FIRST DAY
- 4 hours remain - The embassy
from Peter's company arrives. One of them begs Catherine
not to take up arms against her husband. She takes him by the elbow
and leads him to a balcony. Gesturing
to the ecstatic crowd, she says: "Deliver your message to them." The small group of messengers
all swear fealty to Catherine, Or asked to be allowed to retire. Meanwhile, Peter has gotten
his first concrete news from all the goings on, from a crew of a firework barge that was sailing to Peterhof to provide fireworks for his party. But all their information is still vague,
because they had left early in the morning, as they had been ordered
to go deliver the fireworks. Peter, enraged, orders word to be sent to Oranienbaum
to get his Holstein regiment. He shouts
that he would defend himself to the death. His men arrive and are posted along
the road to the capital. But no one thought to tell them
there might be a fight, so they only brought
their wooden parade ground rifles. A Russian uniform
is found for Peter, because he was still wearing
the German one that he liked so much. His advisers gather around him. One counsels that he don the uniform, ride at full haste to the capital, and remind the people who they had sworn an oath to. Another recommends that he meet up
with a larger contingent of the army, 70 miles away,
and then march on Saint Petersburg. A third recommends he flee to Germany. He does nothing. Men are sent to secure
a nearby island fortress. This fortress is still loyal. At least this was good news. night of THE FIRST DAY
- 2 hours remain - Catherine had gotten the backing of the Synod,
the people, the army and the Senate without firing a shot. But there was one last thing
she had to do. Peter had to formally abdicate. As was the right of the sovereign, She had taken on the rank of the kernel of the Preobrazhensky guards, borrowing pieces of a uniform
from any of the men who seemed about her size. She strode out to meet her soldiers
in the brilliant green of the guards. She would lead the final foray
to capture Peter, herself. As the March began, a young subaltern rushed up to give her his sword knot, the one piece her uniform yet lacked. This subaltern's name,
by the way, was Gregory Potemkin. Peter, meanwhile,
chose to withdraw to the island fortress he had secured
earlier in the evening. As his boat approached, the harbor
was closed off to him. He shouted to the men in the fort. "Do you not know me,
I'm your Emperor" To which the reply came: "We no longer have an Emperor. Long live Empress Catherine the Second". in the time between him sending his man
to secure the fort and him choosing to finally go there, the top Admiral of the
Navy had sworn allegiance to the new Empress, and headed to the fort to take
over his command personally. Peter fled into his cabin to hide when he returned to Peterhof he dismissed everyone and then went
to his room, refusing to speak
to his staff. Then he composed
a letter to Catherine, apologizing for his bad
behavior and offering to share the throne with her. dawn of THE SECOND DAY At first light Catherine receives Peter's letter. She is unimpressed. A few hours later,
she receives another letter offering to abdicate if he could just go back to
Holstein. She accepts. He writes an abject abdication statement detailing how unfit
he is to rule. Needless to say a few weeks later, he wound up dead in a
drunken brawl that was probably a cleverly disguised assassination. And his idol
the man he kept telling himself he was equal to, Frederick the Great, of the affair,
Frederick merely said he allowed himself to be dethroned like a child
being sent to bed. And while Catherine probably had nothing
to do with Peter being killed, she did pardon his killers, as his death freed her up to rule
without the worry that someone would try and form a counter rebellion around him, and rule she did, rapidly reversing almost all of Peter's policies. As Russian forces were literally on the verge of engaging with Denmark, riders arrived
with Catherine's orders to return home. In fact, that was the order
to all the Russian troops in Europe. She was going to begin an era of neutrality, where Russian troops fought on neither side of the Seven Years War, and for this
the army was forever grateful. The church on the other hand was more complex. She put a temporary moratorium
on Peter's order to secularize all church land, but Catherine was intent on being an informed ruler, and as report came in to her,
every day one thing became more and more clear: Russia was broke. Grain prices were soaring,
the Treasury was filled with IOUs. Ending all the wars would help, but not seeing the reparations, which might have been expected with the
decisive victory, Russia was penniless, and without any recourse to credit. And easily a tenth
of all the wealth of Russia was locked up in church lands: wealth that her government needed. After a long back-and-forth with the Senate
about the morality of a church, which owned so much property but didn't help
with the temporal affairs like charity and education, and with a few threats
thrown in, Catherine was able to cow them. All church property became state property. More than a million Church serfs became peasants, which meant
they now had to pay taxes. And all church officials became employees of the state. And this shows
the strength of Catherine. Where Peter lost one of the great pillars of the
Russian state, and arguably his throne for his policy, Catherine's iron will and
careful management of the other elements of power allowed her to drag in this
vast source of government revenue, but in doing so, it also brought up the other
great issue for Catherine: serfs. Because serfs
in Russia were slaves, they could be bought and sold, abused with no rights
over their own bodies. They could be gambled away or traded. They had no
choice but to work in the vocation their master chose for them, and they couldn't
move or leave the land that they were bound to. And with the burgeoning Industrial
Revolution, there came to be a new kind of serf: a serf not owned by a master, but
owned by a corporation, many of whom were employed by the great mining enterprises
of the Urals. And in these mines, life was ugly, brutish, and short. Because they were chattel, men were literally worked to death, beaten when they paused for a
moment in their labor. This treatment caused riots and strikes that would
eventually lead to the largest peasant revolt in Russian history. So join us
next time for the plight of the serfs, the ghosts of Peter the third, and the Pugachev rebellion. ♪
