In the 19th century, epigrams were written on everyone: on each other, on kings, ballerinas and archimandrites. But by some irony of fate, Pushkin's biting quatrain - Alexander Sergeevich himself was not happy later that he wrote it - played a cruel joke on a man who was less worthy of it than others.
In the spring of 1801, the Russian ambassador to England, Count Semyon Romanovich Vorontsov, sent his son Mikhail to his homeland, which he did not remember at all. He was just over a year old when his father, a diplomat, having received a new appointment, took his family away from St. Petersburg.
… Nineteen years ago, on May 19, 1782, the count took the first-born in his arms. A year later, the Vorontsovs had a daughter, Catherine, and a few months later, the count was widowed - his young wife, Catherine Alekseevna, died of fleeting consumption. And Vorontsov arrived in London with two small children. Count Semyon Romanovich never married again, devoting his whole life to Misha and Katya.
From an early age, Semyon Romanovich instilled in his son: any person belongs primarily to the Fatherland, his primary duty is to love the land of his ancestors and valiantly serve it. Or perhaps it is only with a solid understanding of faith, honor and with a solid education …
Count Vorontsov was no stranger to pedagogy before: at one time he even made programs for Russian youth in military and diplomatic education. He was motivated to do this by the conviction that the dominance of ignoramuses and foreigners in high positions is very harmful to the state. True, Vorontsov's ideas were not met, but in his son he could fully implement them …
Semyon Romanovich himself selected teachers for him, he himself made programs in various subjects, he studied with him himself. This well-thought-out education system, coupled with the brilliant abilities of Mikhail, allowed him to acquire that store of knowledge with which he would subsequently amaze his contemporaries throughout his life.
Vorontsov set himself the goal of raising a Russian from his son and not otherwise. Having lived half his life abroad and possessing all the outward signs of an Anglomaniac, Vorontsov liked to repeat: "I am Russian and only Russian." This position determined everything for his son. In addition to Russian history and literature, which, according to his father, were supposed to help his son in the main thing - to become Russian in spirit, Mikhail knew French and English perfectly, mastered Latin and Greek. His daily schedule included mathematics, science, painting, architecture, music, military affairs.
The father considered it necessary to give his son a hand in hand and craft. An ax, a saw and a plane became for Mikhail not only familiar objects: the future Most Serene Prince became so addicted to carpentry that he gave him all his free hours until the end of his life. This is how one of the richest nobles of Russia raised his children.
And now Michael is nineteen. Seeing him off to serve in Russia, his father gives him complete freedom: let him choose a business to his liking. The son of the Russian ambassador arrived from London to St. Petersburg all alone: without servants and companions, which indescribably surprised Vorontsov's relatives. Moreover, Mikhail gave up the privilege that was due to the one who had the title of chamberlain, which had been conferred on him while he was living in London. This privilege gave a young man, who decided to devote himself to the army, the right to immediately have the rank of major general. Vorontsov also asked to give him the opportunity to start service with lower ranks and was enlisted as a lieutenant of the Life Guards in the Preobrazhensky regiment. And since the life of the capital of the young Vorontsov did not satisfy, in 1803 he went as a volunteer to the place where the war was going - in the Caucasus. The harsh conditions bore him stoically.
This is how Vorontsov's fifteen-year-old, almost uninterrupted military epic began. All promotions and awards went to him in the gunpowder smoke of battles. The Patriotic War of 1812, Mikhail met with the rank of major general, commander of the combined grenadier division.
Jacobin General
In the battle of Borodino on August 26, Vorontsov with his grenadiers took the first and most powerful blow of the enemy on the Semyonov flushes. It was here that Napoleon planned to break through the defenses of the Russian army. Against 8 thousand Russians with 50 guns, 43 thousand selected French troops were thrown, whose continuous attacks were supported by the fire of two hundred cannons. All the participants in the Borodino battle unanimously admitted that the Semyonov flushes were hell. The fierce battle lasted three hours - the grenadiers did not retreat, although they suffered huge losses. When later someone dropped that Vorontsov's division "disappeared from the field," Mikhail Semenovich, who was present, sadly corrected: "She disappeared into the field."
Vorontsov himself was seriously wounded. He was bandaged right on the field and in a cart, one wheel of which was hit by a cannonball, was taken out from under bullets and cannonballs. When the count was brought home to Moscow, all the vacant buildings were filled with wounded, often deprived of any help whatsoever. On the carts from the Vorontsov estate, lordly goods were loaded for transportation to distant villages: paintings, bronze, boxes with porcelain and books, furniture. Vorontsov ordered to return everything to the house, and use the wagon train to transport the wounded to Andreevskoye, his estate near Vladimir. The wounded were picked up along the entire Vladimir road. A hospital was set up in Andreevsky, where up to 50 officer ranks and more than 300 privates were treated until he recovered on the full support of the count.
After recovery, each private was supplied with linen, sheepskin coat and 10 rubles. Then in groups they were ferried by Vorontsov to the army. He himself arrived there, still limping, moving with a cane. Meanwhile, the Russian army was moving inexorably towards the West. In the battle of Craon, already near Paris, Lieutenant General Vorontsov independently acted against the troops led personally by Napoleon. He used all the elements of Russian combat tactics, developed and approved by A. V. Suvorov: a swift bayonet attack of the infantry deep into the enemy columns with the support of artillery, skillful deployment of reserves and, most importantly, the admissibility of private initiative in battle, based on the requirements of the moment. Against this, the French courageously fought, even with a two-fold superiority, were powerless.
"Such feats in the mind of everyone, covering our infantry with glory and eliminating the enemy, certify that nothing is impossible for us," Vorontsov wrote in the order after the battle, noting the merits of all: privates and generals. But both those and others witnessed with their own eyes the enormous personal courage of their commander: despite an unhealed wound, Vorontsov was constantly in battle, taking command over the units, whose chiefs fell. It is not without reason that the military historian M. Bogdanovsky, in his study dedicated to this one of the last bloody battles with Napoleon, especially noted Mikhail Semenovich: "The military career of Count Vorontsov was illuminated on the day of the Kraonskoye battle with a brilliance of glory, sublime modesty, usually a companion of true dignity."
In March 1814, Russian troops entered Paris. For four long years, very difficult for the regiments that had fought through Europe, Vorontsov became the commander of the Russian occupation corps. A host of problems fell upon him. The most urgent questions are how to preserve the fighting efficiency of the deadly tired army and ensure the conflict-free coexistence of the victorious troops and the civilian population. The most mundane: how to ensure a tolerable material existence for those soldiers who fell victim to charming Parisian women - some had wives, and besides, an addition to the family was expected. So now Vorontsov was no longer required combat experience, but rather tolerance, attention to people, diplomacy and administrative skill. But no matter how many worries there were, they all expected Vorontsov.
A certain set of rules was introduced in the corps, drawn up by its commander. They were based on a strict requirement for officers of all ranks to exclude from circulation by soldiers actions that humiliate human dignity, in other words, for the first time in the Russian army, Vorontsov, by his own will, prohibited corporal punishment. Any conflicts and violations of statutory discipline were to be dealt with and punished only by law, without the "vile custom" of using sticks and assault.
Progressive-minded officers welcomed the innovations introduced by Vorontsov in the corps, considering them a prototype of reforming the entire army, while others predicted possible complications with the Petersburg authorities. But Vorontsov stubbornly stood his ground.
Among other things, schools for soldiers and junior officers were organized in all divisions of the corps by order of the commander. Senior officers and priests became teachers. Vorontsov personally drew up curricula depending on situations: one of his subordinates studied the alphabet, someone mastered the rules of writing and counting.
And Vorontsov also adjusted the regularity of sending correspondence from Russia to the troops, wishing that people, torn from their native hearth for years, did not lose touch with the Motherland.
It so happened that the government allocated money to the Russian occupation corps for two years of service. The heroes remembered about love, women and other joys of life. What this resulted in, one person knew for certain - Vorontsov. Before sending the corps to Russia, he ordered to collect information about all the debts made during this time by corps officers. In total, it turned out to be one and a half million in banknotes.
Believing that the winners should leave Paris in a dignified manner, Vorontsov paid off this debt by selling the Krugloye estate, which he inherited from his aunt, the notorious Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova.
The corps marched east, and in St. Petersburg rumors were already circulating with might and main that Vorontsov's liberalism indulged the Jacobin spirit, and the discipline and military training of the soldiers left much to be desired. After inspecting the Russian troops in Germany, Alexander I expressed dissatisfaction with their not fast enough, in his opinion, step. Vorontsov's answer was passed from mouth to mouth and became known to everyone: "Your Majesty, with this step we came to Paris." Returning to Russia and feeling a clear ill will towards himself, Vorontsov filed a letter of resignation. Alexander I refused to accept it. Say what you like, but it was impossible to do without the Vorontsovs …
Governor of the South
… In February 1819, the 37-year-old general went to his father in London to ask permission to marry. His bride, Countess Elizaveta Ksaveryevna Branitskaya, was already 27 years old when, during her trip abroad, she met Mikhail Vorontsov, who immediately proposed to her. Eliza, as they called Branitskaya in the world, was Polish by her father, Russian by her mother, and a relative of Potemkin, possessed an enormous fortune and that incredibly enchanting charm that made everyone see her as a beauty.
The Vorontsov couple returned to St. Petersburg, but for a very short time. Mikhail Semyonovich did not stay in any of the Russian capitals - he served wherever the tsar sent. He was very pleased with the appointment to the south of Russia in 1823. The edge, to which the center still could not reach, was the focus of all possible problems: national, economic, cultural, military, and so on. But for a man of initiative, this huge half-asleep space with rare splashes of civilization was a real find, especially since the king was given unlimited powers.
The newly arrived Governor-General began off-road, an ineradicable Russian misfortune. A little more than 10 years later, having traveled from Simferopol to Sevastopol, A. V. Zhukovsky wrote in his diary: "Wonderful road - a monument to Vorontsov." This was followed by the first Black Sea commercial Russian shipping company in the south of Russia.
Today it seems that vineyards on the spurs of the Crimean mountains have come down to us almost from the times of antiquity. Meanwhile, it was Count Vorontsov, who appreciated all the advantages of the local climate, who contributed to the emergence and development of the Crimean viticulture. He ordered seedlings of all grape varieties from France, Germany, Spain and, having invited foreign specialists, set them the task of identifying those that would take root better and would be able to produce the necessary harvests. Painstaking selection work was carried out not for a year or two - winemakers knew firsthand how stony the local soil is and how it suffers from waterlessness. But Vorontsov continued his plans with unshakable persistence. First of all, he planted his own plots of land with vineyards, which he acquired in the Crimea. The fact that the famous palace complex in Alupka was largely built with the money raised by Vorontsov from the sale of his own wine speaks volumes about Mikhail Semyonovich's remarkable commercial acumen.
In addition to winemaking, Vorontsov, looking closely at the occupations that had already been mastered by the local population, did his best to develop and improve the already existing local traditions. Elite sheep breeds were ordered from Spain and Saxony and small wool processing enterprises were set up. This, in addition to employment of the population, gave money to both people and the region. Without relying on subsidies from the center, Vorontsov set out to put life in the region on the principles of self-sufficiency. Hence, Vorontsov's transformative activities, unprecedented in scale, were: tobacco plantations, nurseries, the establishment of the Odessa Agricultural Society for the exchange of experience, the purchase of new agricultural implements abroad, experimental farms, a botanical garden, exhibitions of livestock and fruit and vegetable crops.
All this, in addition to the revitalization of life in Novorossia itself, changed the attitude towards it as a wild and almost burdensome land for the state treasury. Suffice it to say that the result of the first years of Vorontsov's management was an increase in the price of land from thirty kopecks per tithe to ten rubles or more.
The population of Novorossiya grew from year to year. A lot was done by Vorontsov for enlightenment and scientific and cultural upsurge in these places. Five years after his arrival, a school of oriental languages was opened, in 1834 a merchant shipping school appeared in Kherson for the training of skippers, navigators and shipbuilders. Before Vorontsov, there were only 4 gymnasiums in the region. With the sagacity of a clever politician, the Russian governor-general opens a whole network of schools in the Bessarabian lands recently annexed to Russia: Chisinau, Izmail, Kiliya, Bendery, Balti. At the Simferopol gymnasium, a Tatar branch began to operate, in Odessa - a Jewish school. For the upbringing and education of children of poor noblemen and higher merchants in 1833, the Highest permission was received to open an institute for girls in Kerch.
His wife also made her own contribution to the Count's endeavors. Under the patronage of Elizaveta Ksaveryevna, the Orphanage House and a school for deaf and dumb girls were created in Odessa.
All practical activities of Vorontsov, his concern for the future of the region were combined in him with a personal interest in his historical past. After all, the legendary Tavrida has absorbed almost the entire history of mankind. The Governor-General regularly organizes expeditions to study Novorossiya, describe the surviving monuments of antiquity, and excavations.
In 1839, in Odessa, Vorontsov established the Society of History and Antiquities, which was located in his house. The collection of vases and vessels from Pompeii became the personal contribution of the count to the Society's collection of antiquities, which had begun to grow.
As a result of Vorontsov's ardent interest, according to experts, "the entire Novorossiysk Territory, Crimea and partly Bessarabia in a quarter of a century, and the inaccessible Caucasus in nine years, were explored, described, illustrated much more accurately and in more detail of many internal components of vast Russia."
Everything related to research activity was done fundamentally: many books related to travel, descriptions of flora and fauna, with archaeological and ethnographic finds, were published, as people who knew Vorontsov well testified, "with the unrelenting assistance of an enlightened ruler."
The secret of Vorontsov's unusually productive work was not only in his state mentality and extraordinary education. He impeccably mastered what we now call the ability to "assemble a team." Connoisseurs, enthusiasts, craftsmen, eager to attract the attention of a high face to their ideas, did not hit the count's threshold. “He himself looked for them,” recalled one witness of the “Novorossiysk boom”, “got acquainted, brought them closer to him and, if possible, invited them to joint service to the Fatherland.” One hundred and fifty years ago this word had a concrete, soul-elevating meaning, which moved people to a lot …
In his declining years, Vorontsov, dictating his notes in French, would classify his family union as a happy one. Apparently, he was right, not wanting to go into the details of the far from cloudless, especially at first, 36-year-long marriage. Liza, as Vorontsov called his wife, more than once tested her husband's patience. “With an innate Polish frivolity and coquetry, she wanted to please her,” wrote F. F. Vigel, - and no one has had time better than her. And now let's make a short excursion into the distant 1823.
… The initiative to transfer Pushkin from Chisinau to Odessa to the newly appointed Governor-General of the Novorossiysk Territory belonged to the friends of Alexander Sergeevich - Vyazemsky and Turgenev. They knew what they wanted for the disgraced poet, being sure that he would not be ignored by care and attention.
At first it was. At the very first meeting with the poet at the end of July, Vorontsov received the poet "very kindly." But in early September, his wife returned from the White Church. Elizaveta Ksaveryevna was in the last months of her pregnancy. Not the best moment, of course, to get acquainted, but even that first meeting with her did not pass without leaving a trace for Pushkin. Under the stroke of the poet's pen, her image, albeit occasionally, but appears in the margins of the manuscripts. True, then somehow … it disappears, because then the beautiful Amalia Riznich reigned in the poet's heart.
Note that Vorontsov with complete benevolence opened the doors of his house to Pushkin. The poet comes here every day and dines, uses the books of the count's library. Undoubtedly, Vorontsov realized that in front of him was not a petty clerk, and even on a bad account with the government, but a great poet who was becoming famous.
But month after month passes. Pushkin at the theater, at balls, masquerades sees the recently given birth to Vorontsova - lively, elegant. He is captivated. He is in love.
The true attitude of Elizaveta Ksaveryevna to Pushkin, apparently, will forever remain a mystery. But there is no reason to doubt one thing: she, as noted, was "nice to have her famous poet at her feet."
But what about the all-powerful governor? Even though he was accustomed to the fact that his wife is always surrounded by admirers, the poet's ardor, apparently, went beyond certain boundaries. And, as witnesses wrote, "it was impossible for the count not to notice his feelings."Vorontsov's irritation was intensified by the fact that Pushkin did not seem to care what the governor himself thought about them. Let us turn to the testimony of an eyewitness to those events, F. F. Vigel: "Pushkin settled in his wife's living room and always greeted him with dry bows, to which, however, he never responded."
Did Vorontsov have the right, as a man, a family man, to get annoyed and look for ways to stop the red tape of a too daring admirer?
“He did not humiliate himself to jealousy, but it seemed to him that the exiled clerical official dared to raise his eyes to the one that bears his name,” wrote F. F. Vigel. And yet, apparently, it was jealousy that made Vorontsov send Pushkin, along with other minor officials, on an expedition to exterminate the locust, which had so insulted the poet. How hard Vorontsov experienced his wife's infidelity, we again know first-hand. When Vigel, like Pushkin, who served under the governor-general, tried to intercede for the poet, he answered him: "Dear F. F., if you want us to remain in friendly relations, never mention this scoundrel to me." It was said more than sharply!
Having returned from the locust, the irritated poet wrote a letter of resignation, hoping that, having received it, he would continue to live next to his beloved woman. His romance is in full swing.
Although at the same time no one refused Pushkin's house and he still dined with the Vorontsovs, the poet's annoyance with the governor-general because of the unfortunate locust did not subside. It was then that that famous epigram appeared: "Half-my lord, half-merchant …"
She, of course, became known to the spouses. Elizaveta Ksaveryevna - we must give her due - was unpleasantly struck by both her anger and injustice. And from that moment on, her feelings for Pushkin, caused by his unbridled passion, began to fade. Meanwhile, the request for resignation did not bring at all the results that Pushkin had hoped for. He was ordered to leave Odessa and go to live in the Pskov province.
The novel with Vorontsova was a feat of Pushkin to create a number of poetic masterpieces. They brought to Elizaveta Ksaveryevna the unabated interest of several generations of people who saw in her the Muse of genius, almost a deity. And to Vorontsov himself, who for a long time, apparently, gained the dubious fame of the persecutor of the greatest Russian poet, in April 1825 charming Eliza gave birth to a girl whose real father was … Pushkin.
"This is a hypothesis," wrote one of the most influential researchers of Pushkin's work, Tatiana Tsyavlovskaya, "but the hypothesis is strengthened when it is supported by facts of a different category."
These facts, in particular, include the testimony of Pushkin's great-granddaughter, Natalya Sergeevna Shepeleva, who claimed that the news that Alexander Sergeevich had a child from Vorontsova came from Natalya Nikolaevna, to whom the poet himself confessed.
The youngest daughter of the Vorontsovs outwardly differed sharply from the rest of the family. “Among the blond parents and other children, she was the only one with dark hair,” we read at Tsyavlovskaya. This is evidenced by the portrait of the young countess, which has survived safely to this day. An unknown artist captured Sonechka at a time of captivatingly flourishing femininity, full of purity and ignorance. Indirect confirmation of the fact that the chubby girl with plump lips is the poet's daughter was also found in the fact that in the “Memoirs of the book. M. S. Vorontsov for 1819 - 1833 Mikhail Semenovich mentions all his children, except for Sophia. In the future, however, there was no hint of the count's lack of paternal feelings for his youngest daughter.
Last appointment
St. Petersburg, January 24, 1845.
“Dear Alexey Petrovich! You were probably surprised when you learned about my assignment to the Caucasus. I was also surprised when this assignment was offered to me, and accepted it not without fear: for I am already 63 years old … This is what Vorontsov wrote to his fighting friend, General Yermolov, before going to his new destination. No rest was foreseen. Roads and roads: military, mountain, steppe - they became his life geography. But there was some special meaning in the fact that now, completely gray-haired, with the recently awarded title of the Most Serene Prince, he was heading again to those lands where he rushed under the bullets of a twenty-year-old lieutenant.
Nicholas I appointed him governor-general of the Caucasus and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian troops, leaving behind him the Governor-General of Novorossiysk.
The next nine years of his life, almost until his death, Vorontsov - in military campaigns and in the work to strengthen Russian fortresses and the combat readiness of the army, and at the same time in not unsuccessful attempts to build a peaceful life for civilians. The handwriting of his ascetic activity is immediately recognizable - he has just arrived, his residence in Tiflis is extremely simple and unassuming, but the city's numismatic collection has already begun here, in 1850 the Transcaucasian Society of Agriculture was formed. The first ascent to Ararat was also organized by Vorontsov. And of course, again the efforts to open schools - in Tiflis, Kutaisi, Yerevan, Stavropol, with their subsequent unification into the system of a separate Caucasian educational district. According to Vorontsov, the Russian presence in the Caucasus should not only not suppress the originality of the peoples inhabiting it, it simply must be considered and adapt to the historically established traditions of the region, the needs, and the character of the inhabitants. That is why, in the very first years of his stay in the Caucasus, Vorontsov gave the go-ahead for the establishment of a Muslim school. He saw the path to peace in the Caucasus primarily in religious tolerance and wrote to Nicholas I: "The way Muslims think and relate to us depends on our attitude to their faith …" believed.
It was in the military policy of the Russian government in the Caucasus that Vorontsov saw considerable miscalculations. According to his correspondence with Yermolov, who had pacified the militant highlanders for so many years, it is clear that the fighting friends agree on one thing: the government, carried away by European affairs, paid little attention to the Caucasus. Hence the long-standing problems generated by inflexible politics, and besides, disregard for the opinion of people who knew this region and its laws well.
Elizaveta Ksaveryevna was inseparably with her husband at all duty stations, and sometimes even accompanied him on inspection trips. With noticeable pleasure, Vorontsov reported to Ermolov in the summer of 1849: “In Dagestan she had the pleasure of going two or three times with infantry in martial law, but, to her great regret, the enemy did not show up. We were with her on the glorious Gilerinsky slope, from where you can see almost all of Dagestan and where, according to a common legend here, you spat on this terrible and accursed land and said that it was not worth the blood of one soldier; it is a pity that after you some bosses had completely opposite opinions. This letter shows that over the years the couple became close. Young passions subsided, became a memory. Perhaps this rapprochement also happened because of their sad parental fate: of the Vorontsovs' six children, four died very early. But even those two, having become adults, gave the father and mother food for not very joyful reflections.
Daughter Sophia, having married, did not find family happiness - the spouses, having no children, lived separately. Son Semyon, about whom they said that “he was not distinguished by any talents and did not resemble his parent in any way,” was also childless. And subsequently, with his death, the Vorontsov family faded away.
On the eve of his 70th birthday, Mikhail Semenovich asked for resignation. His request was granted. He felt very bad, although he carefully concealed it. He lived "idle" for less than a year. Five decades of service to Russia remained behind him, not out of fear, but out of conscience. In the highest military rank of Russia - Field Marshal - Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov died on November 6, 1856.
P. S. For services to the Fatherland to the Most Serene Prince M. S. Vorontsov was erected two monuments - in Tiflis and in Odessa, where both Germans and Bulgarians, and representatives of the Tatar population, clergy of Christian and non-Christian confessions arrived at the opening ceremony in 1856.
Vorontsov's portrait is located in the first row of the famous "Military Gallery" of the Winter Palace, dedicated to the heroes of the war of 1812. The bronze figure of the Field Marshal can be seen among the prominent figures placed on the Millennium of Russia monument in Novgorod. His name is also on the marble plaques of the St. George Hall of the Moscow Kremlin in the sacred list of the faithful sons of the Fatherland. But the grave of Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov was blown up together with the Odessa Cathedral in the first years of Soviet power …
