Finally, however, he sat down and wrote a submissive letter to Catherine, acknowledging his errors, and proposing to share the sovereign authority with her. To this letter Catherine gave no reply, except to send Count Panin to the Czar, who persuaded him to sign a declaration that he was not fit to reign, and that he voluntarily abdicated the throne. Having done this, the poor, weak prince was carried off and locked up in the palace of Ropscha. “It was necessary that some apparent reason should be given for such extraordinary proceedings, and a short manifesto was accordingly set forth, proclaiming the accession of Catherine, without any mention of the unhappy emperor, but alleging as her only motives for assuming the government her tender regard for the welfare of the people, and above all for the holy and orthodox Greek religion, which she feared was exposed to total ruin; and this notable document of state villany thus concludes: ‘For these causes, etc., we, putting our trust in Almighty God and in his divine justice, have ascended the imperial throne of all the Russias, and have received a solemn oath of fidelity from all our faithful subjects.’ Dated June 28, 1762. “Thus, by a revolution which never could have occurred under any other government than that of Russia, which few could account for and no one seemed to comprehend,—which was accomplished in the course of a single day, without injury to individuals, and without tumultuous violence,—did a young woman, a foreigner, and a stranger to the imperial blood, spring into the throne of the Czars.” Catherine II., having thus established herself upon the throne, began to consider how she could best retain her newly acquired power. The first obstacle which presented itself to her mind was the Czar, Peter III. She had him under lock and key at Ropscha, it is true, but then he had his friends and his faithful Holstein guards, who had seen his downfall with grief and indignation. So Peter III. must be made an end of, and those most accomplished of villains, Orloff and Baratinsky, were sent to Ropscha to make an end of him, which deed they performed very satisfactorily both to themselves and to the empress, by strangling him in his dining apartment with a napkin.