The Emperor, abandoning his flowers and his fair ones, fled to his yacht or galley, which was rowed to Cronstadt, of which his enemy, the High Admiral Talizine, had already made himself master. The imperial galley (relates M. Rulhière in his "Histoire sur la Révolution de Russie") came under the ramparts in the night, while the great alarm bells rung, the drums were beaten and scarlet rockets ascended in showers from the dark mass of the Castle of Kronslot; and then, all along the line of fortifications, Peter saw two hundred port-fires shedding their weird unearthly glare through the yawning embrasures upon the twilight sea and sky--each port-fire beside a loaded cannon--loaded against himself! This was at ten o'clock; but ere the great oars of the galley were laid in, or the anchor dropped, a sentinel challenged: "Who comes there?" "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor," replied the Captain of the galley, who was standing on its gilded prow. "There is no longer any Emperor!" was the stern reply of some one on the ramparts. "'Tis false! I am here--I, Peter Antonovitch," said the Emperor, growing pale at these daring and terrible words, as he stood up and threw back his cloak to show himself and his well-known Prussian star, by the clear, lingering twilight of the northern evening. "Sheer off," shouted the Admiral Talizine, "or, by our Lady of Kazan, I will fire on you!" "We are going--give us but time," cried the Captain hopelessly, through his speaking-trumpet. At that moment a thousand voices on the ramparts shouted on the still twilight air-- "Long live the Empress Catharine II.!" On hearing this, Peter burst into tears, and fell back into the arms of his attendants, saying-- "The conspiracy is general--from the first days of my short reign I have seen it coming!" He was soon after abandoned by all, even by his obnoxious Holstein Guards, who surrendered to the Regiments of Smolensko and Valikolutz; and then he was committed by his wife, prisoner of state, to the Castle of Robsch, in a solitary place, eighteen miles from St. Petersburg. Six days afterwards had only elapsed, when it was suggested that though young Ivan was still lingering a captive at Schlusselburg, and some were not without hopes of replacing him on the throne, tranquillity could not be perfectly restored while Peter lived, though lonely and abandoned now. His wife's lovers and favourites came to this decision speedily; so late one afternoon, three horsemen arrived at the residence of the fallen Emperor. They were Count Orloff, who had in his breast a laced handkerchief of the Empress, the grim Colonel Bernikoff, and a Hospodeen or gentleman, who announced that they had come to sup with him; and, according to the Russian fashion, glasses of brandy were served round before they sat down. In that given to the Emperor was poison.