Catherine faced down more than a dozen uprisings during her reign.

Of the various uprisings that threatened Catherine’s rule, the most dangerous came in 1773, when a group of armed Cossacks and peasants led by Emelyan Pugachev rebelled against the harsh socioeconomic conditions of Russia’s lowest class, the serfs. As with many of the uprisings Catherine faced, Pugachev’s Rebellion called into question the validity of her reign. Pugachev, a former army officer, claimed that he was actually the deposed (and believed dead) Peter III, and therefore the rightful heir to the Russian throne.

Intelligent, ruthless, sexually insatiable: she was the most powerful woman in the world, dragging Russia ‘out of her medieval stupor and into the modern world’. Born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, the daughter of a German prince, she was related through her mother to the dukes of Holstein. In 1744, she arrived in Russia, as the Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna, and married Peter, grandson of Peter the Great and heir to the throne. Russia at the time was ruled by Peter’s mother, the empress Elizabeth. The marriage was an unhappy one and on her arrival in Russia, Catherine suffered from a form of pleurisy, which causes sharp pains in the chest. She had to have her blood let by a doctor four times in one day, which she claimed saved her life.