Ivan VI of Russia - Fall From The Throne and Imprisonment

Fall From The Throne and Imprisonment

Thirteen months later, a coup d'état placed the Empress Elizabeth on the throne (6 December 1741), and Ivan and his family were imprisoned in the fortress of Dünamünde (13 December 1742) after a preliminary detention at Riga, whence the new Empress had at first decided to send them home to Brunswick. In June 1744, following the Lopukhina Affair, they transferred him to Kholmogory on the White Sea, where Ivan, isolated from his family, and seeing no one other than his jailer, remained for the next twelve years. When rumours of his confinement at Kholmogory became more prevalent, he was secretly transferred to the fortress of Shlisselburg (1756), where he was still more rigorously guarded, not even the very commandant of the fortress knowing the identity of "a certain prisoner".

On the accession of Peter III (1762) the situation of Ivan seemed about to improve, for the new emperor visited and sympathised with his plight; but Peter himself lost power a few weeks later. New instructions were sent to Ivan’s guardian, who received orders to place manacles on his charge, and even to scourge him should he become refractory.