After Peter's predecessor Empress Elizabeth had died, he and Catherine had been set to succeed the throne, but Catherine used this as an opportunity to become a usurper. She orchestrated a coup with lover Count Orlov, and had taken an army to force her husband to abdicate. Her reign had lasted for 34 years with many controversies over her personal life, one of the most scandalous of her-or any-era. However, behind the rumor and gossip lay one of the most astute and skilful rulers in Russia's long, turbulent history.5 Catherine was a female intellectual in a time where few women were educated, nor held power.
She set about composing herself for the ceremony that was to mark the ultimate stage in the transformation of an insignificant German princess, born Sophie Auguste Friderike of Anhalt-Zerbst on 21 April 1729, into 'the most serene and all-powerful Princess and lady, Catherine the Second, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias.6 Coming into power in 1762, Catherine had dealt with many hostilities throughout her reign. Many times throughout her reign, Catherine had struck down the Ottoman Empire, created the "Nakaz" of 1767 and annexed nations such as Crimea, Poland and Ukraine, and had added 200,000 square miles of land to Russia. In 1774, a Don Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachov had set out to claim the throne as the dead Peter the Great, which Catherine had crushed, and in 1775, she tightened her grip on Serfdom and forced it onto Ukraine where it hadn't been put into operation before. By the end of her reign, there was hardly a peasant in the country who was free.7 Catherine was so powerful, she sought to take Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), only to withdraw, instead making a treaty with the Ottoman Empire. Catherine was an avid student of the Enlightenment, which was the European intellectual movement whose ideas about the social contract and human rights were being shaped by their own notions of the legitimate role of government.
