Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky - Tumblr Posts
So thanks to @microcosme11 who showed a lot of interest in the incredible painting “Battle of Leipzig” by Johann Peter Kraft I’ve decided to consecrate a series of posts to the main participants of the event depicted on the canvas!
It’s simply going to be a bunch of my guesses about who is who over there. 👀
Unfortunately I’m going to illustrate my ideas with such an amount of pictures that it’s simply a necessity to divide this post into several parts…
Well, as an old Russian saying goes, “Don’t feed me bread, just let my speak a lot about 19-century men in fancy uniforms”!
Ahem.
So here comes part 1!
First of all, let’s start with the most important participants - three allied monarchs themselves. Here they are: Alexander I of Russia, Franz II of Austria and Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. 👑
…Aaaaand I was lucky enough to find some old photos I took in the State Hermitage Museum during my last trip to Saint-Petersburg!
I guess Saint-Petersburg is at some point the second home for each and every lover of the Russian Empire. Even nowadays the city itself represents the living remains of that illustrious period in Russian history. :)
As for the paintings those epic depictions of allied monarchs are located in the Military Gallery of the Winter palace. The portrait of Franz II is also one of Kraft’s works which was presented by Kaiser himself to Alexander I when the latter decided to organise the Military Gallery (which is also dedicated to the victory of Leipzig, what a coincidence) in the 1820s while the portraits of Alexander and Friedrich were made by the German painter Franz Krüger who had been working for the Russian Imperial court for a long period of time.
All three of them look truly magnificent but it’s a little bit hard to find the right angle for a photo because they hang pretty high and are gigantic. 😅
Okay, back to the “Battle of Leipzig”~
Since monarchs were usually followed by an escort of their loyal courtiers, the exact same thing goes for the Kraft’s painting. This time for the major part it consists of different military men. I believe most of them come from the general headquarters.
There are three major figures accordingly behind Alexander, Franz and Friedrich - three chiefs-of-staff of the allied forces.
The first man in the crowd is (I’m still not entirely sure about him but it would be still logical to some extent) August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, quartermaster-general of the Silesian army and Blücher’s right-hand man.
The second one is probably (like I don’t know where his aiguillettes are but the resemblance is quite obvious) Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky, chief-of-staff in the Russian army.
He became one of the Alexander’s closest friends since he was introduced to him by his father Pavel I, the emperor of Russia, when Alexander was still a grand-duke (or how we call him in Russian - цесаревич / tsesarevich ✨).
By the way, Volkonsky and his colleague Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, a general who also went through all Napoleonic wars, were the only commanders in the Russian army who received the Grand Cross of the British Order of the Bath after all the struggles.
And here is Vorontsov as a small postcriptum. :)
Mikhail was the eldest son of Semyon Romanovich Vorontsov, a Russian diplomat who served as an ambassador in the United Kingdom for almost thirty years! That was the main reason why he knew English language as well as his mother tongue, Russian.
In the nearest troublesome future he and Wellington actually became very good friends as well! 🇷🇺🇬🇧
To be continued 🔜