Elizabeth
Anna I died in autumn 1740. Shortly before her death, she had appointed her infant grandnephew, son of her niece, Princess of Mecklenburg, Ivan VI, as tsar, and nominated her old favorite Biron as the regent. The gesture did not save Biron from the many enemies he had made over the course of Anna's rule, and he was exiled to Siberia within three weeks of her death. Regency was taken up by Ivan's mother Anna Leopoldovna. This arrangement did not either. Noting her cousin's distaste for her and consolidating her control over the guards, Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth, executed a bloodless coup and took the throne. Anna and the infant Ivan were carried away and imprisoned, and Elizabeth arrested all her known and suspected opponents along the way.
Elizabeth had been brought up in relative quiet, and from early childhood had been praised for her beauty. Her interests were clothes, shopping, dancing, and men, and throughout her reign she had an extremely public and extremely long list of suitors. Nonetheless, she did much to reincarnate Peter's reign; upon gaining the throne, she immediately restored the Senate and scattered Anna's German administration, sentencing both Münnich and Ostermann to death (a sentence commuted to exile at the scaffold). By scattering the hated Germans and projecting an image of beauty and affection, Elizabeth maintained one of the most popular public images among the Russian populace at the time. She entrusted much of her administration to Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a man she personally disliked, but whose skills she shrewdly understood were needed by the state.
Read more about this topic: Military History Of The Russian Empire