r ORLOV, Gregory, a favourite of Catherine II. of Russia, was born in 1734, and having entered the Russian army, served in the Seven Years' War. He had a handsome figure, a genteel bearing, an unscrupulous conscience, and all the other accomplishments essential to a court-hunter. Accordingly, he had not been long in St Petersburg when the Grand Duchess Catherine made him her favourite paramour, and her accomplice in her ambitious plots. His fortune rose still higher, when his mistress in 1762 had assassinated her husband, Peter III., and had mounted the throne. Dignities and riches were lavished upon him; he was allowed to wear the picture of the empress in his button-hole; and a medal was struck, and an arch erected in honour of his having stayed a plague at Moscow in 1771. Yet by this time the minion, in his pampered insolence, was bringing about his own disgrace. The proposal of Catherine to marry him privately would not satisfy him. He would be her acknowledged husband and her associate in the throne, or at least he would be made the king of some such country as Astrakhan. This arrogance gradually estranged the empress, until in 1772 she took advantage of his absence, on an embassy to the Turks, to supplant him by a new favourite. From this time Orloff seems to have been the victim of disappointed ambition. Although honoured with the title of prince, supplied with large grants of money, and latterly re-admitted to the court, he could not tolerate the sight of his successful rival. He sought to forget his chagrin in foreign travel. Madness, however, seized him, and brought him to the grave in 1783.

Orloff had by Catherine a son named Bobrinski.

ORLOFF, Alexis, a brother of the preceding, was born in 1737, and became a soldier by profession. His Herculean strength and stature, and his reckless audacity, rendered him a valuable tool for his brother in the revolution of 1762. He engaged to be one of the assassins of Peter III.; and it is said that it was his hands that strangled the unfortunate monarch. The after services of Orloff in the cause of the Empress Catherine were of the same unprincipled stamp. It is true that in command of the Russian fleet in 1770 he burned the Turkish squadron in the Bay of Tchesme, and thus won many notable honours and the title of Tchesmenski. But most writers attribute his victory entirely to the counsels of the Englishman Elphinstone. He was certainly more in his element when soon afterwards he sought out the youthful Russian princess Tarakanova at Rome, decoyed her on board a vessel, and sent her home to spend her days in a dungeon. The public life of Orloff closed at the death of Catherine and the accession of Paul. After having been compelled to attend at the disinterment, and to assist at the funeral of Peter III., he was glad to escape from further punishment into Germany, and to remain away from Russia till the commencement of the next reign. His death took place at Moscow in 1808.

There were three other brothers who took part in the plots, and shared the prosperity of the two above mentioned.