Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin
Count Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin | |
---|---|
Алексей Бестужев-Рюмин | |
Born | |
Died | April 21, 1766 | (aged 72)
Nationality | Russian |
Occupations |
|
Spouse | Anna Ivanovna Bötticher |
Children | Andrey Alexeevich Bestuzhev-Ryumin |
Parents |
|
Relatives | Mikhail Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin (brother)
|
Honours | Artemy Petrovich Volynsky |
Succeeded by | Mikhail Gavrilovich Golovkin |
Early life and career
Alexey was born at
In 1712,
Bestuzhev curiously illustrated his passion for intrigue in a letter to Tsarevich Alexey Petrovich at Vienna, assuring his "future sovereign" of his devotion and representing his sojourn in England as the deliberate seclusion of a zealous but powerless well wisher. That extraordinary indiscretion might well have cost him his life, but the tsarevich destroyed the letter. (A copy of the letter, taken by way of precaution beforehand by the Austrian ministers, survived in the Vienna archives.)[3]
On his return to Russia, Bestuzhev served for two years without any salary as chief gentleman of the Bedchamber at the court of
On the occasion of the Treaty of Nystad (1721), which terminated the Great Northern War's 21 years of struggle between Russia and Sweden, Bestuzhev designed and had minted a commemorative medal with a panegyrical Latin inscription, which so delighted Peter, then at Derbent, that he sent a letter of thanks written in his own hand along with his portrait.[3]
The sudden death of Peter the Great (8 February 1725) seriously injured Bestuzhev's prospects. For more than ten years, he remained at Copenhagen, looking vainly towards Russia as a sort of promised land from which he was excluded by enemies or rivals. He rendered some important services, however, to Empress
Grand Chancellor of the Russian Empire
Bestuzhev's chance came when Empress Elizabeth, immediately after her accession (6 December 1741), summoned him back to court and appointed him vice-chancellor. For the next 20 years, during a period of exceptional difficulty, Bestuzhev practically controlled the foreign policy of Russia.[3]
At the time, Bestuzhev judged
Russia and Sweden
Bestuzhev could not prevent the signing of a Russo-Prussian defensive alliance in March 1743 but deprived it of all political significance by excluding the proposed guarantee of Frederick's conquests from the First Silesian War. Moreover Bestuzhev's efforts made the standing of the Prussian king, whom he regarded as even more dangerous than France, at the Russian court fell steadily, and the vice-chancellor prepared the way for an alliance with Austria by agreeing on 1 November 1743 to the Treaty of Breslau of 11 June 1742.[3]
The bogus
Anti-Prussian coalition
European diplomacy then focused on the king of Prussia, whose apparently insatiable acquisitiveness disturbed all his neighbours. Bestuzhev's offer, communicated to the British government at the end of 1745, to attack Prussia if Britain would guarantee subsidies to the amount of some £6,000,000, carried no weight now that Austria and Prussia had started coming to terms. Then, Bestuzhev turned to Austria and, on 22 May 1746, concluded an offensive and defensive alliance between both powers that was manifestly directed against Prussia. In 1747, he also signed alliances with Denmark and the Porte. At the same time, Bestuzhev resisted any rapprochement with France and severely rebuked the court of Saxony for its intrigues with the French court in Versailles.[3]
He then felt hampered by the persistent opposition of the Vice-Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, formerly his friend but now his jealous rival, whom Frederick the Great secretly supported. In 1748, however, Bestuzhev was able to have Vorontsov removed by proving to the empress that Vorontsov had received money from Prussia.[3]
The hour of Bestuzhev's triumph coincided with the peace congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (April to October 1748), which altered the whole situation of European politics and introduced fresh combinations, the breaking away of Prussia from France and a rapprochement between Britain and Prussia, with the inevitable corollary of an alliance between France and the enemies of Prussia.[3]
Bestuzhev's strong political prejudices, at first, prevented him from properly recognising that change. Passion had always been too large an ingredient in his diplomacy. His Anglomania also misled him. His enemies, headed by his elder brother, Mikhail and the vice-chancellor Vorontsov, were powerless while his diplomacy seemed faultless but quickly took advantage of his mistakes. When the Anglo-Prussian and Franco-Austrian Alliances were formed in the first half of 1756, Vorontsov advocated the accession of Russia to the latter, but Bestuzhev insisted on a treaty with Britain. However, his influence had started to wane. The totally-unexpected Anglo-Prussian alliance had justified the arguments of his enemies that Britain seemed impossible to deal with, while his hatred of France prevented him from adopting the only alternative of an alliance.[3]
To counter the covert intrigues against him, Bestuzhev now proposed the erection of a council of ministers to settle all important affairs, and its first session (14–30 March 1756) proposed an alliance with Austria, France and Poland against Frederick II, but Bestuzhev opposed any arrangement with France. He endeavoured to counteract his failing influence by a secret alliance with Grand-Duchess Catherine, whom he proposed to raise to the throne instead of her Holstein husband, Peter, from whom Bestuzhev expected nothing good either for himself or for Russia.[4] He conducted negotiations through Stanislaus Poniatowski and then the Russian ambassador of Saxony, later Stanislaus II of Poland
The inclusion of Russia in the anti-Prussian coalition (1756) in the
Nevertheless, he lost the chancellorship and suffered banishment to his estate at Goretovo (April 1759), where he remained until the accession of Catherine II (28 June 1762). Catherine recalled him to court and made him a field marshal. However, he took no leading part in affairs and died on 21 April 1766 in Saint Petersburg.
References
Sources
- ISBN 3-89702-788-7
- The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak, Chancellor and the teacher of spies to the main character.
- The Sbornik of the Russian Historical Society, vols. 1, 3, 5, 7, 12, 22, 26, 66, 79, 80, 81, 85-86, 91-92, 96, 99, 100, 103 (St Petersburg, 1870, &c.)
- Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen, vols. 1–21 (Berlin, 1879–1904.)
- R. Nisbet Bain, The Daughter of Peter the Great (London, 1899).
- Emelina, M. (2007). "Алексей Петрович Бестужев-Рюмин" [Alexei Petrovich Bestuzhev-Riumin]. Вопросы истории (in Russian). 7: 29–45. ISSN 0042-8779.
- Kindinov, Mikhail (2015). ""Система Петра Великого": к вопросу о дипломатии канцлера А. П. Бестужева-Рюмина (1748—1756 гг.)" ["System of Peter the Great": on Chancellor A. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin Diplomacy (1748—1756)] (PDF). Nauchny Dialog (in Russian). 8 (44). Gorno-Altaysk: 36–54.
- public domain: Bain, Robert Nisbet (1911). "Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Alexius Petrovich, Count". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 824–826. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Anisimov, E. V. (2023). "БЕСТУЖЕВ-РЮМИН АЛЕКСЕЙ ПЕТРОВИЧ". Great Russian Encyclopedia. Electronic version. Retrieved 4 October 2023.