Catherine at once decided to standardize the government of the Empire and to this end she decided to abolish the local autonomies that had existed in various border provinces. This meant the actual elimination of all the Ukrainian rights and privileges and the placing of the Ukrainians on the same basis as the Great Russians. At the same time Cyril Rozumovsky, in his role as Colonel of the Izmailovsky Regiment, had been one of the men to whom she owed her throne at the time of her coup d’état and she did not wish at once to cast him out of his position. She therefore waited until she received a report that he was seeking to have the hetmanate made hereditary in his family. It is not known definitely whether this proposal was put forward by some of the Officers’ Council in an endeavor to please him, whether he had engineered the move, or whether it was inspired by Teplov, who had accompanied him to Ukraine as his tutor and who was regarded as the spearhead of Russian influence during his hetmanate. Although the proposal was not signed by the officers, word of it was reported to Catherine and along with it were sent reports of the oppression of the peasants and ordinary Kozaks by their officers. The Seven Years War, which saw the end of the French possessions in America and the rise of Prussia, ended in 1763. Then, with peace in Europe, 1764 proved another turning point in the complicated game that involved Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. In that year Catherine succeeded in forcing the election as King of Poland of Stanislas August Poniatowski, a former lover. His relatives, the Czartoryski Family, had hoped to put one of their number on the throne, but Catherine by her energetic use of Russian money and Russian troops definitely had her way and she could know with satisfaction that Poland would from that time on cause no trouble. Just as the weakening of Poland had caused the Tsars to increase their control of Ukraine, so the placing of a Russian puppet on the Polish throne justified Catherine in going further in Ukraine. She accordingly requested the resignation of Rozumovsky. He postponed doing it as long as was practicable, but was finally compelled to yield and asked to be relieved of his difficult and dangerous office. This was accepted on November 10, 1764 and in return she gave him a pension of 60,000 rubles a year and allowed him to keep the vast estates that had formerly been connected with the post of hetman. She replaced him with a new Little Russian Board composed of four Russians and four Ukrainians, seated in order of seniority to show that there was no difference between the two peoples, and left the power in the hands of the governor general, Count Rumyantsev. At the same time she instructed Rumyantsev to give particular attention to the introduction of serfdom and to beware of the general dislike of the Kozak officers for Russia.