Aleksey Grigoryevich, Count Orlov

Aleksey Grigoryevich, Count Orlov (born Oct. 5 [Sept. 24, Old Style], 1737, Lyutkino, Tver province, Russia—died Jan. 5, 1808, [Dec. 24, 1807], Moscow) was a military officer who played a prominent role in the coup d’état that placed Catherine II the Great on the Russian throne.

Having entered the cadet corps in 1749, Orlov became an officer in the Russian guards as well as a close adviser to his brother Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov, who about 1760 became the lover of Catherine, wife of Emperor Peter III (reigned 1762). The Orlov brothers, supported by the guards, planned to overthrow the unpopular Peter; on the night of July 9 (June 28), 1762, Aleksey Orlov brought Catherine from her residence at Peterhof, outside St. Petersburg, to the guards’ barracks. From there a military escort accompanied her into St. Petersburg, where she was solemnly proclaimed empress of Russia by the archbishop of Novgorod. Aleksey Orlov then proceeded to Peter’s palace at Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), received his abdication, arrested him, and transported him to the village of Ropsha. Several days later, while still under Orlov’s supervision, Peter was killed (July 16 [July 5]).

Immediately after the coup d’état Orlov was promoted to the rank of major general, and in 1769 during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, he was placed in command of the Russian fleet, which destroyed the superior Turkish fleet near Çeşme (Cheshme, located on the Aegean coast of Anatolia) on July 6, 1770. Although Orlov’s actual role in this victory was minor and he subsequently refrained from forcing his way through the Dardanelles strait, he was welcomed in St. Petersburg as a hero and given the title Count Chesmenski.

In 1775, when the beautiful Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova was being put forward by two Polish emigres in Italy as the daughter of the Russian empress Elizabeth, Catherine, regarding her as a potential pretender to the throne, sent Orlov to bring her to St. Petersburg. Orlov seduced Tarakanova, lured her onto his ship at Livorno, Italy, and had her imprisoned at the Shlisselburg Fortress near St. Petersburg (1775). After this incident Orlov resigned from the army (1775), retired to his estate at Lyutkino, and devoted himself to horse breeding.

Orlov was later recalled to St. Petersburg, however, by Emperor Paul I (ruled 1796–1801), Catherine’s successor, who forced him to carry the crown of Peter III in a procession transferring the late emperor’s body to a place of honour in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul.