Peter III of Russia
Empress Elizabeth arranged for Peter to marry his second cousin, Sophia Augusta Frederica (later Catherine the Great), daughter of Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst and Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. The young princess formally converted to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Ekaterina Alexeievna (i.e., Catherine). They married on 21 August 1745. The marriage was not a happy one but produced one son, the future Emperor Paul, and one daughter, Anna Petrovna (20 December 1757 – 19 March 1759). Catherine later claimed that Paul was not fathered by Peter: that, in fact, they had never consummated the marriage. During the sixteen years of their residence in Oranienbaum, Catherine took numerous lovers, while her husband did the same in the beginning.
History of Russia (1721–96)
Peter III reigned for a mere six months before his wife, Catherine II, led a coup against him. He was born and raised in Germany in the court of his father, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and did not come to live in Russia until he was fourteen. It is difficult to ascertain his character because there exist many contradictory accounts. Catherine's journals describe him as incompetent bordering on retarded, yet his acts as emperor illustrate a certain amount of shrewdness. Peter withdrew Russia from the Seven Years' War to salvage the remainder of the empire's finances and to save his beloved Prussia from complete defeat while depriving Russia of territorial advances. Instead, he threatened war with Denmark over his ancestral claims in Schleswig, though he was overthrown before fighting could begin. Perhaps most notable of his reign was the “Manifesto on the Freedom of the Nobility” which ended compulsory state service for the nobility. However, during his short reign Peter managed to irritate the nobility by dramatically decreasing the power of the Senate. He similarly angered the Church by his liberation of serfs on church land and his obvious contempt for Russian Orthodoxy. Yet what ultimately terminated his reign was his passion for Prussian style military. His delight for rigid discipline alienated the palace guards, and ultimately allowed Catherine II, with the help of her lover Grigori Orlov who led the palace guard regiments, to overthrow Peter III on July 9, 1762. Peter's assassination symbolically showed the end of the era of palace revolutions.