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Menshikov’s every move about town. Two pages on horseback followed, two gentlemen of the court bounced along at the carriage doors, and six dragoons closed the parade and chased away the curious.1 Nobody else in the capital surrounded his activities with such magnificence.
    Peter suffered in silence from this ostentation that was putting the true tsar more in the shade with every passing day, so that even the people apparently no longer thought of him. To cap it all off, Menshikov waited until the emperor had taken his oath before the Guard to announce that, from now on, as a security measure, His Majesty would reside not at the Winter Palace but in his own palace, on Vasilievsky Island. Everyone was stunned to see the tsar thus placed “under the bell,” but no one spoke up to protest. The principal opponents, Tolstoy, Devier and Golovkin, already had been exiled by the new master of Russia.
    Having installed Peter - superbly, it is true - in his own residence, Menshikov kept close watch over the company he kept. The barricades that he placed at the doors of the imperial apartments were insuperable. Only the tsar’s aunts, Anna and Elizabeth, his sister Natalya and a few trusted friends were allowed to visit him. Among the latter were the vice-chancellor Andrei Ivanovich Ostermann, the engineer and general Burkhard Christoph von Münnich (master of so many great works), Count Reinhold Loewenwolde (a former lover of Catherine I and paid agent of the duchess of Courland), the Scottish General Lascy (who was working for Russia and managed to stay out of trouble during the disorder that came on the heels of the empress’s death), and finally and inevitably, the incorrigible Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein, still haunted by the idea of returning Schleswig to the family holdings. Menshikov had indoctrinated them, and bribed them to prepare his future son-in-law to be an emperor only in name and to give up the conduct of affairs to him, definitively.
    Entrusting to them the education of this unreasonable and impulsive teenager, all he asked of them was to engender in him a taste for appearances rather than a taste for actions. For Menshikov, the ideal son-in-law would be a paragon of nullity and good manners. What did it matter if he were an ignoramus, if he had no concept of politics, as long as he knew how to conduct himself in the salon? Orders were given to His Majesty’s entourage to keep him informed on matters superficially, but absolutely not in depth. However, while the majority of the mentors chosen by Menshikov acceded to this instruction, the most cunning and most wily among the group had already begun to throw a wrench into the works.
    Menshikov thought he had won the day; but meanwhile, the Westphalian Ostermann was gathering around him those who were most aggravated by the new dictator’s vanity and arrogance. For a long time, they had observed Peter’s mute hostility towards his virtual father-in-law, and they secretly supported their sovereign’s cause. They were soon joined in their conspiracy by Peter’s sister Natalya and by the two aunts, Anna and Elizabeth. When the instigators of this little tribal conspiracy urged him to join them, Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein also acknowledged that he would fight for the emancipation of Peter II, especially if that might be accompanied by a recognition of his own rights to Schleswig and - of course - to Sweden. Coincidentally, Elizabeth had just become engaged to another descendant of Holstein, Charles Augustus, first cousin of Charles Frederick, a candidate for the throne of Courland and bishop of Lübeck. This circumstance could only reinforce the Holstein clan’s determination to shake off the yoke of Menshikov and to liberate Peter II from a humiliating guardianship.
    Alas! June 1, 1727, the young bishop Charles Augustus was carried off by smallpox. Overnight, Elizabeth found herself with no suitor, no more marital hopes. After Louis XV balked, she