Six months after the beginning of the new reign of Peter III, crowned in January 1762, Catherine, the consort of the new Tsar, led an army of 12,000 soldiers and artillerymen against her husband, forcing his abdication. The newly crowned Tsar was not well regarded by his subjects, especially his army. This discontent allowed Catherine to plot and forge alliances, enabling her to carry out a coup against Peter III. Shortly after his abdication, Peter III was strangled. It was suspected, and is possible, that Catherine was complicit in his assassination; indeed, some foreigners referred to her as the "Tsar-slayer". The reign of the new sovereign did not begin under the best auspices, as she had no legitimate claim to the throne and was often criticized for her libertine lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, the satire of the time portrayed her in an obscene manner, and diplomats did not hesitate to include these caricatures in their correspondence.

Catherine was the daughter of a high-ranking Prussian officer and was named Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. She was chosen as the future Tsar's bride in 1744 by Peter III's aunt, Empress Elizabeth. The young woman was forced to convert to the Orthodox religion, took the name Ekaterina Alekseevna, and learned Russian. The marriage, celebrated in 1745, proved disastrous and scandalous for both parties. By the time Empress Elizabeth died in 1762, Catherine had already given birth to two illegitimate children. After the coup, she ascended the throne as Catherine II. She was an enlightened ruler, though not excessively so, and very bellicose. Among the Empress's readings were Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments, and the Encyclopédie. These works influenced a pseudo-constitution written by her own hand, called Nakaz. The document was never intended to be a constitution, as it was never the Empress's intention to challenge absolutism; indeed, the document clearly states that "the sovereign is absolute because only absolute powers granted to a single person are appropriate for such a vast empire". At the same time, absolutism was not supposed to deprive the people of their "natural liberty".