Russian Monarch. Daughter of Peter "the Great" and Martha Skawronskaja (later known as Catherine I.). On December 6. 1741 she rode in front of the guards from the barracks of the Preobrashenskij Guards to the Winter Palace. She woke up the regent Anna Leopoldowna, and the 15 month old Tsar Iwan VI.. He was later brought to the Schlusselburg where he was killed. In 1742 she secretly married Alexej Rasumowskij, a former shepherd who came to the court as a member of the choir under Anna Leopoldowna. This marriage never prevented her from having affairs. She named her nephew Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp as her successor and married him in 1745 to Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst. She founded the University of Moscow in 1755 and Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg in 1758. In 1743 she ended the war with Sweden which brought Russia a part of Finland. Following the advise of her minister Alexej Bestuchew-Rjumin she allied with England against Prussia. When England allied with Prussia against France she saw it as treachery and allied with Austria against Prussia. She later fought with Empress Maria Theresia in the War of Austrian succession. Prussia's invasion in Saxony started the Seven Years War. In the beginning Friedrich II. of Prussia was very successful, but that changed when then russian troops joined the austrians. Field Marshal Apraxin defeated the prussians in August 1757. He surprised everyone and retreated after he had heard that the Tsaritsa was deathly ill. He didn't want to face the successors wrath if he defeated the prussians again, Peters friendship with Friedrich II. was general knowledge. Elizabeth health improved again and Apraxin and Bestuchew where charged with treachery. Apraxin died before the end of the trial, but Bestuchew was sentenced to death. He was never executed, but banned to his lands which he was allowed to keep. Russian and austian troops invaded Berlin in 1760 and looted the city. When England stopped his support for Prussia, Friedrich saw the end coming, but in this situation Elizabeth, the last of the Romanows, died. The last months of her life she felt old and lonely and suffered from depression. By the Julian calendar she died on the afternoon of December 25, 1761. Her nephew succeeded her and immediately ended the war with Prussia, but was soon ousted from power by his wife who entered the history books as Tsaritsa Catherine II. "the Great."