Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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The Empress Elizabeth died the victim of intemperance; and while poor Prince Ivan, an uncrowned emperor, a prisoner without a crime, was left to pine in the Castle of Schlusselburg, the sceptre was given to the feeble and dissipated Peter III., the husband of the beautiful, voluptuous, and talented Catharine II., daughter of a petty prince, but descended from the ancient house of Servestan,—a woman whom, in three short months after their coronation, he contrived to disgust by his political innovations, and still more by his amatory inconstancy; so it was resolved to get rid of Peter, who was then in his thirty-fourth year.

Peter I. had nearly lost Russia by compelling the people to cut off the tails of their coats; and Peter III. became equally unpopular by ordering them to trim their vast beards, and by putting his troops in the Prussian uniform. Crowned heads should leave such matters to tailors and tonsors; but he certainly abolished the secret tribunal with its contingent horrors, and recalled many a poor exile from Siberia.