A conspiracy was organized, some months before it was executed, by Counts Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen, Nikita Petrovich Panin, and the half-Spanish, half-Neapolitan adventurer Admiral Ribas. The death of Ribas delayed the execution. On the night of 23 March [O.S. 11 March] 1801, Paul was murdered in his bedroom in the newly built St. Michael's Castle by a band of dismissed officers headed by General Bennigsen, a Hanoverian in the Russian Service, and General Yashvil, a Georgian. They charged into his bedroom, flushed with drink after dining together, and found Paul hiding behind some drapes in the corner. The conspirators pulled him out, forced him to the table, and tried to compel him to sign his abdication. Paul offered some resistance, and Nikolay Zubov struck him with a sword, after which the assassins strangled and trampled him to death. He was succeeded by his son, the 23-year-old Alexander I, who was actually in the palace, and to whom General Nikolay Zubov, one of the assassins, announced his accession, accompanied by the admonition, "Time to grow up! Go and rule!" The assassins were not punished by Alexander, and the court physician James Wylie declared apoplexy the official cause of death.