Russia's infant emperor Ivan VI was deposed at 15 months, held prisoner for 23 years, and killed by his guards under standing orders in 1764

Empress Anna of Russia named her great-nephew Ivan Antonovich her heir by manifesto in October 1740, when he was about eight weeks old. She died days later and the baby was proclaimed emperor, with Duke Biron as regent. Biron was overthrown within weeks and Ivan's mother, Anna Leopoldovna, became regent. In December 1741 Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, arrested the family in the palace at night and was proclaimed empress. The family was held at Riga, then Dünamünde, then Kholmogory, where Ivan was kept in solitary confinement for about 12 years. In 1756 he was moved in secret to Shlisselburg fortress, where even the commandant did not know who he was. Records bearing his name were collected and sealed or destroyed. In 1759 an officer reported him shouting that he was "the prince of this empire." Peter III's decree of 1 January 1762 ordered that the prisoner not be handed over alive to anyone who tried to take him. Under Catherine II, Panin's instruction said he was to be killed rather than surrendered. On the night of 4 to 5 July 1764 Second Lieutenant Vasily Mirovich, whose requests to recover his family's hereditary estates Catherine had refused, raised part of the garrison with forged manifestos to free Ivan and proclaim him emperor. When Mirovich brought up a cannon, the guards killed Ivan first. He was 23. Mirovich was executed on 15 September 1764. Ivan's grave has never been identified^†.