Peter the Great found the Russian woman a painted doll, hung over with pretty ornaments and trinkets, eating fattening foods and sleeping all day long in order to get stout, for stoutness at that time passed for beauty. Peter forbade the clergy to marry persons against their will, and required a formal engagement six weeks previous to the wedding, so as to give persons a chance to become acquainted before they were bound to each other for life. He introduced public theatres, and compelled persons of both sexes to attend them. Social intercourse of the sexes, under modern and civilized restrictions, was forced not only upon the Russian nobility, but upon the merchant class. Receptions were compulsory functions; these were attended by both men and women. At these receptions, and generally in public, Russians, particularly women, were required to wear western European dress in public. This movement toward the social emancipation of the Russian woman inaugurated by Peter found a powerful support and development during the reigns of Peter's female successors. During the eighteenth century, Russian women were taking part in all the court revolutions. During that time, too, social morality was at a low ebb, owing to a lack of moral restraint. Peter died in 1725. After the weak reign of Anna Ivanovna (1730-1740) and the unpopular one of her foreign successor, the supreme authority passed into the hands of Peter's daughter, Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1762). She was skilfully kept in the background by the family of her predecessor, spent all her time in amusements, and apparently took no interest in state affairs and politics. As Peter's daughter, she was adored by the people and by Peter's Old Guard, whom she attached to herself by constant kindness and attentions. She was an embodiment of unaffected simplicity, warmth, and sunshine, and her apparent light-heartedness and gayeties put to sleep all suspicion of seeking to gather the reins of power in her own hands. But on the night of November 25, 1741, after a prayer and a solemn oath never to sign a death sentence, Elizabeth put on a cuirass, went to the barracks, led the grenadiers to the palace, had the reigning family and their supporters arrested, and was proclaimed empress in the morning, amid general rejoicing.