Peter had sent for his Holstein guards and loudly protested that he would fight. As the news from the capital trickled in, however, he changed his mind and took boat to Kronstadt. It is said that when the sentinel, in the dark, challenged him, and was told that he was the Emperor, the man said: “Go away; there is no Emperor.” He returned, shaking with fear, to Oranienbaum, and offered to share his throne with Catherine. She contemptuously refused that dangerous half-measure. Peter, weeping like a child, and begging that they would not separate him from Elizabeth, abdicated, and was sent into the country about twenty miles away. Elizabeth Vorontsoff was sent to Moscow.
What precisely happened to Peter III is one of the many dark mysteries of the romance of the Romanoffs. Five days later Catherine coldly announced that the late Emperor had died of a colic which had sent a fatal flow of blood to his brain. There is a rumour that he was poisoned. There is another rumour, which is generally accepted, that Alexis Orloff, who conducted him to Ropcha, strangled him; and there is no evidence whether Catherine was or was not (as is generally believed) a party to the murder.
There were the usual sunny days for all who had assisted in the revolution. In three months nearly half a million dollars in money, and great gifts of land and serfs, were showered upon the new court. Many of the courtiers, however, did not long enjoy favour. In 1763, when Catherine had gone to Moscow for her coronation, a certain Feodor Hitrovo was arrested for treason. For some time there had been rumours of plots to put Ivan V, the son of Anne and Anthony whom Elizabeth had displaced, back upon the throne. Peter III had brought the poor youth, now almost an idiot, to St. Petersburg, and Catherine had confined him in the fortress of Schlüsselburg. The latest rumour in the capital was that Catherine was to wed Orloff, and that the jealous courtiers were determined to prevent her or to kill Orloff. Whether there was a plot or no, it is clear that the promotion of the Orloffs had caused grave murmurs. Princess Dashkoff, Panin, Captain Passek, and other conspirators of 1762, were, to their mighty indignation, arrested on suspicion of treason. They were released, but their term of favour was from that moment clouded.