"Why did Anna need to fight Turkey?"
"Elizabeth and Siberia"
The next emperor after the death of Elizabeth was Peter 3.
December 25, 1761.
The son of the daughter of Peter the Great, Anna Petrovna, who was given in marriage to the German Duke of Holstein. After all, no one assumed that Peter 1 would not have male heirs. Therefore, he was invited - after all, the grandson of Peter 1. However, another relative appeared, also a German, whose mother was Peter the third's great-aunt. That is, a second cousin, and concurrently his wife - Sophia Frederica Augusta Angelt Zerbskaya.
About six months later, on June 28, 1762, she stupidly came with 3 hundred guards to Oraniebaum, arrested Emperor Peter 3, he abdicated the throne, and immediately died under unexplained circumstances. Although two days before her death, Catherine sent the doctor Paulusen to him, who, instead of drugs, had surgical instruments for opening the body. Two days before death.
Do you understand everything? Personally, I don't.
Promotional video:
So the wife of Peter III, Catherine 2. Angelt-Tserbskaya
Her very first decrees were about the complete enslavement of the peasants, and "On the permission of all foreigners entering Russia, who will settle in which provinces they wish, and on the rights granted to them."
As we remember, a plague was raging in Europe at that moment, so it becomes clear why the coup led by Catherine took place. You don’t believe that some aunt, also German, lured 300 guardsmen over to her side and seized the throne from her own husband? Is it really that simple?
Living space was vitally important for the Germans, pardon the tautology. And what Frederick did not succeed, he succeeded with the help of Catherine.
Nevertheless, it did not stop there and later annexed all of Siberia to Russia, the Far East up to Alaska. As well as the Crimea, Novorossia and the Caucasus. And also the Commonwealth.
During the years of her reign, the number of palace intrigues simply went off scale, in them the devil himself would break his leg. And behind them, like behind an impassable palisade, the true state of affairs is hidden.
Namely - the plague in Europe and the stampede of Europeans just to go far. The territory has become depopulated. This, in turn, made it possible to annex practically ownerless lands. But as soon as Catherine opened the road to the Germans in Russia with her manifesto, the quarantine was broken and the plague reached Moscow.
How popular Catherine was can be judged by the peasant revolt led by Yemelyan Pugachev. Starting in the south of the Urals, in the Yaik town, it quickly covered the entire south and the Urals, from Kazan to Samara, from Astrakhan to Azov. Tighten the nuts, Empress.
For 2 years there was a full-scale civil war, now dying out, then flaring up again. And if not for the betrayal of their own atamans, who knows how life would turn out now.
But it was as it was - Pugachev was on the wheel, but the peasants and Cossacks still achieved relief.
It is very difficult not to drown in thousands of little things, decrees and backstage intrigues when describing the life of Catherine.
Therefore, we will dwell on this today and continue in the next chapter.