Note 12 — Chapter V · MY INTERVIEW WITH THE PRINCESS.

Seven days after the accession to the throne of Ekaterina II. her husband, Peter III., died, it is supposed, a violent death. Some time after a simple Cossack, named Pougachoff, an escaped convict from the mines of Siberia (whose torn nostrils showed that his crime had been murder), succeeded in raising the whole of the Urals (such was the credulity of Russians at that time) by giving himself out as Peter III.