at all" (Bain, 1902e, p. 196). Catherine also comments on what may be taken as something of a PR coup privileging Dashkov's role in the conspiracy, inasmuch as she cites a letter written by a Russian for whom she has no admiration to Voltaire, whom she admires, to the effect that "a woman, 19 years old, has changed the government" (p. 196). Dashkov, Catherine implies, was a flighty soubrette and was let into the existence of longtime conspiracy only toward its conclusion, when she could be instrumental as a lady-in-waiting. Yet in her memoirs, Catherine also compliments Dashkov, who must have been lovely and popular, as a useful sounding board for courtiers not having access to Catherine but nevertheless desiring to declare loyalty to her (Catherine, 1935, p. 274).
Whatever the motives of those who were involved either directly or indirectly in removing Peter III from and placing Catherine II on the throne of Russia, certain lines of action about the events that accomplished this can be discerned, beginning with evidence that events proceeded along both political and personal lines. The political incident that precipitated the coup appears to have been the arrest of one Captain (Lieutenant, in Catherine's memoirs) Passek, an officer in the regiment known as the Ismailovskii Guards (Johnson, 2001). Dashkov (1995, p. 64) at one point says that the reason for the arrest was that one officer of the Guards gossiped with one Captain Ismailov about an impending conspiracy to depose Peter III, explaining that he had his information from Passek. Ismailov, not in on the conspiracy, had Passek arrested. What makes Dashkov's information problematic is that four pages later she explains that Passek and a fellow officer had visited her the day before Passek's arrest to "warn[] me of the impatience with which the Grenadiers, more than any other egiment, were waiting for their chance to overthrow Peter III" (1995, p. 69). Impatient for the coup to ...