Burchard Christoph Munnich, a native of Saxony, does not have a very good reputation in Russia. In the works of Russian historians, he often appears in the form of a rude soldier, who
from afar, Like hundreds of fugitives
To catch happiness and ranks
Abandoned to us by the will of fate.
(M. Yu. Lermontov.)
There is not the slightest doubt that if he were Russian, the assessment of his activities would have been higher.
In Soviet times, Valentin Pikul, who, with all his merits, was a person who was carried away and did not recognize halftones, had a great influence on the formation of the image of Minich among people interested in history. In the novel "Word and Deed" Minich, at the behest of the writer, found himself in the camp of the enemies of the "patriots of Russia". V. Pikul also reluctantly told about Minich's victories, but in such a way that it becomes clear to everyone: the visiting German only knew how to fill up enemies with corpses and blood of Russian soldiers.
Meanwhile, Minich's services to the new fatherland are indisputable and very great. And he was an outstanding and talented person. Talking about him in the future, we will now and then pronounce the words "first", "first", "first". Pay attention to this as you read the article. It is not by chance that the image of Minich appeared on the Novgorod monument "Millennium of Russia".
And Catherine II, whose enthronement our hero tried with all his might to prevent, once said about Minich:
Not being a son of Russia, he was one of her fathers.
So, let's try to briefly talk about it.
Burchard Munnich: young years in Europe
The real surname of our hero is Münnich (Munnich), he was born in the city of Neuenhuntorf in the Saxon county of Oldenburg in 1683. He was a second generation nobleman and, like his father, became a military engineer. People grew up quickly at that time. Already at the age of 16, our hero entered the service of the French army. Before moving to Russia, he managed to serve in the armies of some German states and Poland. He took part in the War of the Spanish Succession: in 1702 he distinguished himself with the rank of captain during the siege of Landau, in 1709, already as a major, fought in the famous Battle of Malplaket. In 1712, Lieutenant Colonel Munnich was wounded during the Battle of Denene and taken prisoner, in which he was held until the conclusion of the Rastadt Peace between France and Austria in March 1714. After his release, with the rank of colonel, he was engaged in the construction of a canal between Fulda and Weser in Hesse.
In 1716, he was in the service of August II, the Saxon elector and king of Poland. Here he rose to the rank of major general, took part in two duels (on one of them he killed Colonel Ganf, on the other he was wounded).
Invitation to Russia and service under Peter I
In 1721, Minich was invited to Russia by the Russian ambassador to Warsaw G. Dolgorukov, whom Peter I later thanked for "a good engineer and general." When meeting with the emperor, the Saxon man described himself as a specialist in serf works and the organization of infantry troops and warned that he was poorly versed in architecture, artillery, as well as in everything related to the fleet and cavalry. He also said that he can teach mathematics, fortification and martial arts.
As a result, Minikh arranged the Obvodny Canal in St. Petersburg and a lock on the Tosna River, built a road from St. Petersburg to Shlisselburg, and then headed the construction of the Ladoga Canal.
Peter himself once said this about him:
No one understands and fulfills my thoughts as well as Minich.
In the service of Peter II and Anna Ioannovna
In 1728, already during the reign of Peter II, Minich became Count of the Russian Empire and was appointed Governor-General of St. Petersburg, replacing the disgraced A. Menshikov in this post. This appointment did not seem particularly high and prestigious then, because Peter II and his entourage preferred Moscow, and no one could know about the imminent death of the young emperor.
Nevertheless, Minikh, as best he could, tried to continue the arrangement of St. Petersburg, Kronstadt and even Vyborg.
In July of the same 1728, Munnich received an unexpected order of "painting on the banners" and "bringing to mind" both the old and recently composed coats of arms - instead of the repressed manager of the Heraldry's Office Santi. Not at all embarrassed, Minich immediately set to work and in May 1729 sent the heraldic book he created for approval to the emperor. At present, it is the coats of arms invented by Minich that are used by St. Petersburg, Kursk and Bryansk. Thus, he can be called not only a Russian commander, engineer and statesman, but also a king of arms.
After the unexpected death of the sick Peter II, Anna Ioannovna, who became empress, returned the court to St. Petersburg in 1732.
Minich, who was involved in all matters of moving and placing the empress and her courtiers in a new place, made the most favorable impression on Anna. As a result, he received the rank of Field Marshal and the post of President of the Military Collegium. In this post, Minikh created two new Guards regiments (Izmailovsky and Horse Guards). In addition, it was under Minich that cuirassier, hussar and sapper regiments appeared in the Russian army. For the newly created cuirassier regiments, horses had to be imported from abroad. Minich oversaw the procurement and development of Russian stud farms.
And also the German Munnich equalized foreign and Russian officers in the salary they received. The arrears on his payments, which had been accumulating over the years, were also liquidated. Also, on the initiative of Minich, 50 fortresses were built or reconstructed on the border with Turkey and Persia. The term of service of privates was reduced to 10 years, the only breadwinner in the family was forbidden to be recruited. On Minich's initiative, several military hospitals and garrison schools were opened. He also became the founder of the Gentry Cadet Corps. He remained its director until 1741, which, on the one hand, ensured decent funding for this institution, and on the other hand, made education in it prestigious.
War of Polish Succession
In 1733, a war broke out, in which Stanislaw Leszczynski, supported by France, and the Saxon Elector Friedrich August, were arguing for the crown of Poland, on whose side Russia and Austria were.
The Russian troops were then led by Peter Lassi, an Irishman of Norman origin, one of the most successful Russian generals of the 18th century, who, unfortunately, is little remembered now.
Peter Lassi
The Spanish ambassador to St. Petersburg, Duke de Lyria, wrote about him as follows:
Lassie, General of Infantry, originally Irish, knew his job perfectly. They loved him, and he was an honest man, incapable of doing anything wrong, and everywhere he would have enjoyed the reputation of a good general.
Already at the age of 13, Pierce Edmond de Lacy (the Irish version of the name - Peadar de Lasa), with the rank of lieutenant, took part in the War of the Two Kings (William III against James II) on the side of the Jacobites. After the defeat, he emigrated to France, where he had to join the Irish Regiment as a private, but he earned himself an officer rank during the Savoy Campaign. In 1697 he transferred to the Austrian service, fought with the Turks under the command of the Duke de Croix, in 1700 he ended up in Russia with him. He took part in the Northern War since the Battle of Narva. He took part in the Battle of Poltava and in the Prut campaign. In 1719 he commanded a corps that devastated the outskirts of Stockholm, after which the Swedes agreed to peace negotiations. As a result, a private of the Irish regiment of the French army, Peter Lassi, rose to the rank of field marshal general of the Russian army. Agree, the case is not ordinary and quite unique.
He also became the Count of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.
It was Lassi who took Kovno, Grodno, Warsaw and many other cities, passing all of Poland - to the Baltic Sea. Under the protection of his army, the Grochowski Diet was held, at which Frederick Augustus was elected king of Poland. Later, the movement of the Lassi corps through Bavaria became the decisive reason for France's withdrawal from the War of the Polish Succession, and in Germany an epigram was written about this:
O Gauls! Did you know the hussar blades
And in fear they thought: devils are serving the Germans!
Tremble, Moscow is sending loyal regiments to us.
Hardly any of you will escape a terrible death!
In Germany, Lassi met with the famous Austrian commander - 70-year-old Eugene of Savoysky, who recently won his last victory. The prince highly appreciated the state of the Russian regiments of Lassi after this rather difficult campaign, and did not skimp on compliments.
Siege of Danzig
In 1734, Minich led the Russian troops during the siege of Danzig (now Gdansk), replacing Peter Lassi as commander-in-chief.
It was then, for the first time in history near besieged Danzig, where Leshchinsky was hiding, the Russians and the French entered the battle. The soldiers of the regiments of Perigord and Blaiseau, under the command of the Count de Plelot, landed near the fortress and went through the swamp directly to the positions of the Russian troops. Since their gunpowder became damp during this transition, they did not bring much trouble to the Russians: 232 Frenchmen, including the commander, were killed (only 8 people were killed by the Russians), the rest surrendered. As a result, Stanislav Leshchinsky had to flee Danzig, disguised as a peasant's clothes.
War with the Ottoman Empire
And then there were victories in the Russian-Turkish war of 1735-1739, which washed away the bitterness of defeat on the Prut River and showed everyone that both the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars can be defeated.
Since 1711, both the monarchs of Russia and its generals experienced fear at the thought of a war with the Ottoman Empire. Painful memories of the humiliating situation in which the army found itself then literally paralyzed the will of the contemporaries of that campaign and especially its participants. But the generation changed, and two Russian armies under the leadership of the new field marshals Minich and Lassi entered the Crimea in turn and successfully fought against the Turks at Azov, Ochakov and Khotin.
In 1736, Minich's troops for the first time in Russian history took Perekop by storm and entered the land of the terrible peninsula, capturing Gezlev (Evpatoria), Ak-Mechet and the khan's capital Bakhchisarai.
Peter Lassi at this time took the fortress of Azov, abandoned under the terms of the Prut Peace.
Due to the lack of food and the outbreak of the epidemic, Minich was forced to leave the Crimea. The Tatars responded with a raid on the Ukrainian lands, but on the way back they were intercepted by the Don Cossacks ataman Krasnoshchekov, who recaptured the prisoners.
In June 1737 Ochakov was taken by storm by the army of Minich.
Lassi at this time moved his troops through the Sivash, in two battles (June 12 and 14) defeated the troops of the Crimean Khan and through Perekop entered the territory of Ukraine.
In August 1739, the Russian army of Minich defeated the Ottoman troops of Seraskir Veli Pasha in the Battle of Stavuchansk, and in this battle Minich was the first in Russia to build his troops in squares - very large, several thousand people each.
Have you noticed how many times in our story we have already used the words "first" or "for the first time"?
The Russian army was surrounded for two days, undergoing continuous attacks from all sides, but successfully and with great losses for the Turks repulsed these attacks. Finally, on August 17 (28), after demonstrating on the enemy's right flank with the forces of five regiments, Minich launched a powerful blow on the left flank. The Ottomans fled.
The Stavuchansk battle went down in history as the most bloodless victory of the Russian army (despite the fact that the Russian army was inferior in number to the Ottoman-Tatar): only 13 were killed among the Russians, at least 1000 people died among the Turks and Tatars. And the commander won this victory, who is traditionally accused of "washing away the shame of the Prut world with streams of Russian blood."
In fact, the losses in the armies of Minich were really great: mainly from reasons not related to military operations (primarily from infectious diseases). But they were just as great in all the armies of that time. And, of course, they were no more losses in the armies of the same Peter I, about whom they said that he "pity people less than horses" (and about the "enlightened European" Charles XII - that he "does not regret either others "). Recall that during the same Prut campaign in 1711, the Russian army lost 2,872 people in battles, and 24,413 from disease, hunger and thirst.
After the victory at Stavuchan, the Russians occupied Khotin, Yassy and almost all of Moldova.
Mikhail Lomonosov at this time was not yet an academician or a court poet. He was a student sent to study in Germany. Lomonosov learned about the victory of Minich at Stavuchany and the capture of Khotin by the Russian troops from the newspapers, and this news so inspired him that, by no means by order, but at the behest of his soul, he wrote the famous ode:
But the enemy that left the sword, Afraid of his own trail.
Then seeing their run, The moon was ashamed of their shame
And in the gloom of her face, blushing, she hid.
Glory flies in the darkness of the night, Sounds like a trumpet in all lands, Kohl is terrible power.
Here he first used the ten-verse stanza, iambic tetrameter, female and male rhymes, cross, pair and encircling rhymes - and in fact created the size of the classic Russian solemn ode, which finally took shape in the 40s of the 18th century through the efforts of Sumarokov. Odes were written in this size at the beginning of the 19th century, including G. Derzhavin ("Felitsa") and A. Radishchev ("Liberty"). And the iambic tetrameter became A. S. Pushkin's favorite size.
But, since all these extremely important in all respects victories over the Ottoman Empire were won by an Irishman and a Saxon, and even during the reign of the "terrible" Anna Ioannovna and, terrible to say, "Bironovism", it was customary to talk about them not too loudly in Russia. The emphasis has always been on the subsequent victories of Rumyantsev and Suvorov. These generals, of course, were more successful, their victories are more ambitious and impressive, but it was Minich and Lassi who started.
"Night Revolution" of 1740
However, many, speaking of Minich, remember not his administrative talents or even victories, but the "Night Revolution" on November 9, 1740 - the first (and again we hear this word!) Coup d'etat in the Russian Empire.
Before her death, Anna Ioannovna signed a decree appointing her grand-nephew, two-month-old John Antonovich, the son of Anna Leopoldovna and Prince Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Bevern-Luneburg (whose adjutant for some time was the notorious Baron Munchausen), the heir to the throne. And the dying empress appointed her favorite Ernst Johann Biron as regent.
In Russia, this German of Courland was declared literally a monster, which, of course, is a great exaggeration. Pushkin also wrote about him:
He had the misfortune of being German; all the horror of Anna's reign, which was in the spirit of his time and in the mores of the people, was piled on him.
Biron was a stranger in Russia, he had few friends, but many enemies, and therefore he had practically no chance of holding such a high post. Ambition ruined him. On October 17, 1740, Biron began to fulfill his duties as regent, and on November 9, Minich's men, led by Lieutenant Colonel Manstein, “came” for him.
Now the mother of the young emperor became regent, and Munnich got the post of "first minister in our councils", while he remained the president of the Military Collegium. However, the rank of Generalissimo went to Anton Ulrich, who thus turned out to be the head of Field Marshal Minich in military affairs, which became the cause of the fatal conflict.
In addition, after the coup, Minich fell seriously ill (caught a cold on a cold autumn night, waiting for the return of Manstein's "expedition"), and while he was lying at home, the emperor's parents managed to agree with A. Osterman about such a redistribution of responsibilities that almost nothing remained of Minich's power … He tried to fight - without any success. It ended with the fact that on March 3, 1741, Minich went all-in by submitting a letter of resignation. To his surprise, they did not dissuade him, the application was immediately satisfied.
