A direct descendant of the royal family, a knyaz. He has no money for home education, for teachers. Although Bagration he didn’t have an education, he would not have achieved anything if he hadn’t studied all his life. Bagration somehow finds himself at the court and begins to rise rather quickly in ranks. Suvorov likes him very much. Why? He was very fond of the type, the type that was always ready to fight. Who will go and attack the French? I will! Who will be the first in the rear guard to shield the retreat? I will! Emperor Paul came up with another bright idea to marry the Georgian. Nothing good came of that pandering marriage. Catherine cheated on Bagration. Bagration often freaked out and got insanely jealous. She was a terrible spender. In a year Bagration found himself in monstrous debt. The hot Georgian shouted: “We will shower Napoleon with hats!”! But in battle, he was completely different. He had absolute composure. He had a good eye like Suvorov. He made no rash decisions. Stories from Russian history
Vladimir Medinsky
19th Century Today we’re having an unusual recording. We continue our cycle of stories about Russian history of the great 19th century. We’re in a historic building, in the estate of the Vasilchikovs on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow, in the Museum of the Military Uniform of the Russian Military Historical Society. A large number of lovers of Russian history have gathered here today. It’s our first live lecture. It is much more pleasant and easier for me to talk like this, because you have no idea how hard it is to perform in a dark room without seeing anyone, looking at a screen. Especially considering that I’m not reading the text like professionals do, but telling things that from my head, only peeping into notes. It's pretty hard psychologically. You don't understand who you're talking to. The topic of our meeting today, which takes place on the eve of the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, is Bagration, the hero of Borodino, the hero of the war of 1812. One of the most famous generals in our history. And a very unusual person in general. In fact, even those who did not study at school know the name Bagration. Because there’s a "Bagrationovskaya" metro station, the bridge of Bagration, a lot of monuments to Bagration. Including on Kutuzov Avenue. One of the most successful offensive operations of the Second World War was Operation “Bagration”, carried out by our military genius of the 20th century, Konstantin Rokossovsky. Someone naturally heard about the Bagration flèche. Do you know what a flèche is? It’s a fortification, built in such a way. Cornerwise to the advancing enemy. It’s a defensive structure, an earthen fortification, which helped to break the line, inflict maximum damage on the enemy on our sacred Borodino field. Of course, there are no flèches left today, but you can see where they used to be on a map. We all know Bagration the commander. As for a person ... And our cycle of stories from Russian history is, first of all, a story about people, not about events, not about the movements of regiments, troops, battalions ... We’re not going to talk about it that much, because I’m not a deep specialist in the war of 1812. We have a lot of brilliant scholars. They will catch me on some inaccuracy right away. We’re talking about people. So, we’re going to talk about Bagration as a person. He occupies a special place in the pantheon of heroes. We have Kutuzov, and to the right and left of him Bagration and Barclay de Tolly. The commander of the first and second western armies. Moreover, the three of them are much higher in that pantheon than other generals, Raevsky, Miloradovich, Kutaisov, and so on. At one time Derzhavin played up on words and that pun became an aphorism for centuries: “Oh, how great Na-pole-on is! He is cunning, and fast, and strict in battle, but trembled as Bog-rati-on attacked him with a bayonet”. Their surnames are written in three words. Knyaz Peter Bagration is the offspring of the most ancient Georgian royal family of the Bogrations. The most ancient doesn’t however mean the richest. In those days Georgia was no longer a state. The times of Queen Tamara have passed. Georgia was a territory. Many different tribes and peoples lived on the territory of Georgia, which could be collectively called Georgians. Each had its own name and several principalities, several kingdoms. The Bagratids ruled for almost a thousand years. They ruled over the territories of Georgia since the 9th century. Back in the time of Peter the Great, Bagration’s ancestors began to gradually move to Russia. They moved because the Persians and Turks were pressing from the south. They pressed not only by administrative-military means, but also by religious ones. They demanded a conversion to Islam. Georgians were our Christian brothers, and quite stubborn. Therefore, they did not like it. Plus, when Peter began his famous Persian campaign, he started from Astrakhan, seized everything and, under an agreement with the Persian Shah, annexed to the Russian Empire all the lands, starting from the south of the Caspian Sea. That is Iran now. Azerbaijan, then Dagestan, Northern Ciscaucasia, our Astrakhan region and Kalmykia. When Peter was going south, the Georgians, the Georgian kings, supported him in his fight with the Persians. Then they had to partially immigrate to Russia. Among those who immigrated were Bagration’s distant relatives. Bagration's grandfather was born in the harem of the Persian Shah. I don't know about his mother. His grandmother’s fate is rather vague. He was born in a harem. Grew up there. Then he asked for a Russian citizenship, wrote an appeal. His name was Alexander. "I was left with my mother at the Shah's court, where I was brought up in their impious and filthy Mohammedan faith." Without equivocals, in Caucasian. In the name of Peter's daughter Elizabeth, he asked to be granted Russian citizenship, as well as to "service with a promotion and a double salary." He modestly asked for a double salary. He also asked to bring his wife and children from Georgia, because he wanted the whole family to move to Russia. As a result, he became a lieutenant colonel. That’s an average rank. He was assigned to serve in Kizlyar. At that time Kizlyar was a Russian city, a fortress, belonging to the Astrakhan province. That’s where he settled. By the way, there’s a museum of Bagration now in Kizlyar, since several generations of the Bagrations lived there. What else is there? There‘s a cognac factory. The 20-year-old Bagration cognac appeared back in the Soviet years there. It’s an old Soviet very high quality cognac. That was his grandfather. His father also wrote an application for Russian citizenship, received it, went to our military service and settled in the Kizlyar fortress too. We don’t know why he had to write an application again. Perhaps his father left him in Persia or Georgia. We don't know. Bagration's father rose to the rank of major. Then a boy named Peter was born in the family of Major Ivan Bagration. Then it all gets foggy. It begins with the fact that it is unknown where he was born. The official version is Kizlyar. 33 historians will be claiming that he was born in Tiflis. We believe that in Kizlyar. It is unclear when he was born. The official version says in 1765. Remember that. This means that he was 47 years old when he died. But there’s plenty of evidence that he was born later. He was probably born in 1769. That is, he was Napoleon Bonaparte’s absolute peer. I’ll explain why. We also don’t know who Bagration's mother was. She came from some princely family. But there were so many Bagrations in the Russian service at that time that they were always confused. Little is known about his childhood. We know that he studied at the garrison school for two years. Imagine it. A direct descendant of the royal family, a knyaz, whose father was only a major without money for home education, studied for two year at the regimental school. We really don’t know what he learned there. Probably, he learned to read and write, because Bagration spoke Russian with a heavy Georgian accent all his life. He spoke terribly French. Only the French-Corsicans understood him. He was no educated Miloranovich or Kutuzov, who spoke French better than any Parisian, much better than Napoleon. He spoke French very poorly. He seemed to know Persian. Later he indirectly carried out some Potemkin’s orders, for which he had to speak Persian. But it’s not for sure. That’s it. I’ll make a small digression. Leo Tolstoy created a very vivid image of Bagration in “War and Peace”. Whose superior was Bagration? He was Andrei Bolkonsky's direct superior. Tolstoy wrote that Bagration was an honest soldier. Sure, he was poorly educated. He had no connections. He didn't flaunt at court like Kutuzov. He was just a soldier. But it wasn’t like that. To begin with, although Bagration had no education, he would not have achieved anything if he hadn’t studied all his life. It’s the closest analogue of Peter the Great. Who also by the age of 16 could read, wrote very poorly, and knew two mathematical operations - addition and subtraction. Our 10th grade class was Peter the Great's education level. Only later he will learn several foreign languages and master countless occupations of the highest qualification. That is, complex engineering professions. Fortification. With a crew of assistants he could build a ship. What did it mean to build a large battleship in those years? It was like putting together a spaceship nowadays. The same miracle of technology. Bagration spent his whole life reading, learning by doing. All the time he was trying to learn new military-tactical schemes. It was very important. That’s what was written in the regiment form, where he served: "Can read and write in Russian and Georgian". Yermolov, who knew Bagration well, later wrote in his memoirs: "Without a mentor, without money, knyaz Bagration had no means to receive an education. Gifted by nature, he was left without education and was appointed for military service”. Why did Bagration join the army? Guess. He needed to make a living. He enlisted as a private. Unlike people with connections like Grinev in The Captain's Daughter he had no such acquaintances that would help him enlist in the Guards regiment and make him an ensign at the age of 16. No. Bagration went to serve in the local Astrakhan regiment as a private. And served there for five years. First as a private, then as a sergeant. Why do I believe that he was born in 1769? Because he couldn't have become a private at 18. With his personality and his family's not-so-wellbeing it was impossible. They used to enlist earlier. If he was born in 1769, he would become a private at 14. That's normal. Up to the age of 19 he served there in the lower ranks. And at that age he received the first officer's rank of warrant officer. Then Bagration himself wrote and recalled in the documents that he took an active part in the Caucasian wars. The Caucasian wars didn’t begin with the appointment of Yermolov. There were Caucasian wars before that. There were difficulties with the local population. With the Dagestani, other tribes. And with the Chechen tribes. Such sluggish confrontation continued in the Caucasus. Bagration wrote that he repeatedly took part in clashes with Caucasians in his younger years as a member of the Astrakhan Regiment. There’s even a story about how, after another punitive raid on a certain Chechen village, which wasn’t our most successful one, the boy Bagration was dragged out from under a pile of dead bodies by Chechens and released without a ransom. Perhaps because he was young and brave and from the Caucasus too. Perhaps he knew some of the locals there. History doesn’t tell us. He was captured by the Chechens but they let him go. Why are these data contradictory? Because the names of the regiments were always changing. At first there was the Astrakhan Regiment, then it was changed into the Caucasus Regiment, located there, in Kizlyar. The documents were changing. It’s not that important. We proceed from the fact that as a teenager Bagration was a fighting soldier. We know for a fact that Bagration got into Potemkin's army and distinguished himself at the storming of Ochakov during another Russian-Turkish war. He distinguished himself so much that Potemkin promoted him skipping one rank. This was rare. By the time of the assault at Ochakov Bagration was a lieutenant, he made him a captain at once. Skipping the rank of lieutenant. He stressed that he was promoted for bravery. It’s believed that Bagration was among the first officers to climb the wall at Ochakov. Bagration served as adjutant and orderly under various commanders. Including the future Field Marshal Saltykov. That job is radically different from how we imagine it today. An adjutant in the modern army of the 20th-21st century is a superior. This superior usually has a smart young guy whom he orders around. I'm not a military man. A military man would tell you better what the aide-de-camp usually orders to do. Back then, the job of an adjutant was quite different. The adjutant's job was to relay orders during combat. This battalion should go this way, this regiment - that way. Here's the paper, go on. It was hell out there. There were no cell phones. GPS didn’t work. The visualization was simple. Red uniforms were worn by the British, white uniforms were worn by the Austrians, blue uniforms were worn by the French. Go and look for your unit in the middle of a battle. That's why this job was deadly risky. And there could be quite a lot of orderlies, and not so many adjutants. The adjutant also had to coordinate the activities of other orderlies, who rode where. He also could have stayed in the troops to monitor how orders were carried out. It was very dangerous for life. This was the kind of work the young Bagration did in the troops. Later he participated into all the wars. One can open Wikipedia and look at his military path, an infinite number of battles that we know from the school course. He was lucky in the Polish campaign, when Suvorov subdued Poland and took Prague. Bagration ended up in the troops of Valerian Zubov. Platon Zubov was the latest and nastiest of Catherine's favorites. I don’t want to make modern analogies, but the lady was over 60. He was a little over 20, a handsome guy. It’s hard to get what kind of relationship they had. Moreover, during her last years Catherine had already quite a decline. She got fat and was very ill. After she broke up with Potemkin, everything went wrong for her. Has anyone seen Catherine's dress here in one of the halls? She wore it when she was in shape. She wore it in her 50s. Later she got fat. It was a dress for riding a horse. There were several Zubov brothers, as well as the Orlovs. But they were all complicated characters. But Valerian Zubov was an exception. He wasn’t just the handsomest Zubov… He was so handsome that his older brother Platon was wildly jealous of him… He always suspected that Valerian wanted to steal the empress away from him, and he was only 20 years old. Valerian Zubov was a desperate combat officer. He was noted by Suvorov. During the Polish campaign he lost his leg. He had it amputated above the knee. Then a special bendable English prosthesis on hinges was made for him, and with that prosthesis he continued to command the troops. On horseback he led the Persian campaign. He was a very strong and exemplary military man. He was Bagration's commander. It was there in Poland that Bagration met Suvorov. It is believed that Suvorov noticed him, although there was a chasm between Bagration and Suvorov. Kutuzov became field marshal for Borodino, and Suvorov became field marshal for defeating the Polish rebels. But then after Poland Paul sends Suvorov into exile in the countryside, and Bagration somehow finds himself at court and begins to rise through the ranks unexpectedly and quite quickly. In Poland he was a lieutenant colonel, he was about 30. Then very quickly he became a colonel, and later a young general. Also in his 30s. Here again I’m going to argue with Leo Tolstoy, because Bagration was not at all a straightforward, no-nonsense drifter who was afraid of the court. He was very suave. He was a true oriental man. He was a combat officer, not a hero. When necessary, he would be silent. When necessary, he would make a compliment, make a toast. He was a great storyteller. Imagine this. Emperor Paul's family. The emperor's wife. His children. And there was Bagration, such a charming man. Even after Paul's death the empress dowager was very fond of him. She gave him some valuable gifts. One might say she patronized this young, brave, bright man. And Bagration became chief of the jaeger battalion, which guarded Pavlovsk, where Paul's family lived. He was the chief of security. He was always at court. He was often invited to dine. There have been very few cases since Peter, when Russian generals were allowed into the family, at the dinner table, where they could have a heart-to-heart talk with the monarch family. Peter was accessible. That is, either you are in a special relationship, like Orlov or Potemkin, or know your place. A well-known courtier Kutuzov was one of those special people. He used to make coffee for Zubov, waiting for hours in the reception room to be the first to make his oriental coffee for him. Kutuzov used to tell everyone that when he was Ambassador to Constantinople he had found out a special secret of delicious coffee and that only he could make it for Platon Zubov. He wasn’t shy. Those were the morals. Bagration practically lived with Paul's family. You can see from the records. He'd have lunch with him, or dinner with him. It had great consequences later on. And that's where he became a young general. There’s one interesting story. In the Russian army of that time there was a unique principle of seniority of officers. At first it seemed silly to me. All the Soviet textbooks wrote about it, it was a measure of tsarist obscurantism. But it was a very reasonable principle, to be honest. Imagine this. Two colonels. Two military units meet before a battle. And it isn’t stressed who's in charge. They are both colonels, they both have regiments. Or two generals. Each has a division. In order to determine automatically, without voluntarism, without quarrels and without disputes, who is the chief the one who was made a general by an earlier decree was automatically in charge. It didn’t matter what age he was. One could be 30 years old and the other one - 50. But the one who was 30 was made a general three years ago. And the one who was 50 – only last year. The one who’s 30 was the superior one. He was superior in terms of time in office. There was another advantage. When the time came to assign new ranks or awards, those who had served longer in that rank would be awarded. So that no one would be offended, senior officers would be given orders, or they would be the first to be promoted next time. Bagration, having become a young general, went to the famous war, Count Suvorov’s Italian campaigns. There he was the youngest general. And not because he was just promoted to general. He was just the youngest there. But being the youngest, he nevertheless becomes the most famous there. Suvorov likes him very much. Why? He was very fond of the type, the type that was always ready to fight. Who will go and attack the French? I will! Who will be the first in the rear guard to shield the retreat? I will! Who will lay siege to the fortress? I will! Bagration was always like that, all his life. At one time, when we had another endless war with the Swedes… They tried to take revenge on us for the Northern War... It was somewhere around 1809. When they lost Finland for good. Arakcheev came to coordinate our troops, who were stuck there. Arakcheyev supported the idea of going to Sweden overice. It was a suicidal idea. Because if one got under artillery fire, everyone would sink. And when Arakcheev asked who would go overice, Bagration said: “I will”! He went there and won. He was Suvorov's favorite student. He went everywhere with Suvorov. He commanded both the vanguard and rearguard, was proactive, and went through all the battles. There, in Italy, he became very good friends with the emperor's own brother, Constantine. Alexander’s brother, who was supposed to rule in Constantinople according to his grandmother's plan. The idea with Constantinople didn't work out unfortunately. But Constantine was a combat officer in the army. I don't know if he personally led his soldiers into attack, but he was in the army, risking his life. He was a man of very heavy character, the exact opposite of Alexander. Alexander was an intellectual and a diplomat. Cunning, incredibly polite, never raised his voice. With servants and officers he was on a first-name basis. Emperor Alexander set that trend. Since his reign, the field marshal always addressed the ensign as "You". He was a nobleman, wasn’t he? Yes. He was. Nobility was given with the first officer's rank. Constantin was the complete opposite, a boor. He wasn’t a bad person, but he used foul language, he had a bad relationship with everyone, he was explosive. There was one exception. He was friends only with Bagration. They were inseparable friends. Then they were united by something else after that. Suvorov returned home in triumph after all those campaigns. Bagration being his closest circle went to his estate. Even lived there with him for a while. Stories from Russian history
Vladimir Medinsky
19th Century Bagration was so close to the royal family that Emperor Paul had another bright idea to marry the Georgian. And he married him off. He chose his bride himself and organized everything. The wedding was held right in the palace of Gatchina. He married the first beauty, which the whole St. Petersburg went crazy about. It was the 18-year-old Kate Skavronskaya. If you know your history, you will remember that it was a rattling mixture. She was the direct great-granddaughter of Peter the Great's wife's brother. That Skavronskaya, who later became empress, had relatives who were also dragged along to the capital. They were all given count titles. Her great-granddaughter became Bagration's wife. On the one hand Bagration could have been offended, because apparently she was the granddaughter of a serf, and he was royal, but on the other hand she was related to the royal family. He went down with it. The important thing was that she was incredibly beautiful. She was considered the second one. The first one was her mother. Her mother was 35 years old. They were the two main beauties of St. Petersburg. On her mother's side, she was Potemkin’s relative. And not just any relative. Potemkin was a lovable man. He had favorite nieces who went with him everywhere. I don't want to spread rumors, it’s not proven. But everyone thought that those nieces were off-limits. They were Potemkin's girls. On her mother's side she was Potemkin’s descended, and on her father's side - Martha of Skavronskaya’s descended. It’s easy to guess that nothing good came of that pandering marriage. Catherine cheated on Bagration. Bagration often freaked out and got insanely jealous. She was a terrible spender. In a year Bagration found himself in monstrous debt. They lived in St. Petersburg. Palace Square, the arch of the General Staff. On one side we have the Hermitage building, which has a very beautiful Impressionist collection. It's a nice museum space. On the other side there’s the Ministry of Defense. There used to be apartment buildings where the Ministry of Defense is now. He had no money to buy expensive real estate in St. Petersburg. He rented an apartment. Because Kate wanted to live close to the Winter Palace. I was curious about Bagration's financial state. He received a general’s salary. To tell you the truth, with such expenses, it was impossible to live on that money. In the early 19th century a noble lieutenant had a salary of 166 rubles. Like in the Soviet years. Only not per month, but per year. Do the math, 166 rubles a year. “Eugene Onegin”, published by Pushkin cost 10 rubles. A ticket to the theater cost 5 rubles. Your lieutenant’s salary will be enough to buy “Eugene Onegin” and visit the theater once. That's it. A war horse cost 100 rubles. Perhaps it was given to you in the army, but it was better to buy your own one. That was you salary for the whole year. At that time a lieutenant general, with all his allowances, received the same 100 rubles per month. But it wasn’t good enough for a young beautiful wife. Therefore, people counted on the income from the estate. Bagration had no estates. What estates? Whatever the Tsar would give him for his service. It must say that the authorities treated heroes well. If they rewarded them, they rewarded them royally. Kutuzov reported his victory at Borodino, and was given 100,000 rubles. That’s quit a bonus. Bagration was given small villages. Two villages in Podolsk province. With 329 serf souls. That's less than Pushkin had. Pushkin was not a rich nobleman, and Bagration was the poorest. After a short year of marriage, Bagration asked the tsar to buy the village from him. Because it was hard to sell it. Plus, the treasury always paid more than the market. It’s the same today. Because buying back a village from an honored person is a hidden form of bonus. The treasury bought the two villages back from him. And since he was a hero after all, he was given another one. This time in the Lithuanian province. A large village, 500 serf souls. A little more than Pushkin had. A year passed. Bagration ran out of money again. He again went to court, wrote an application to the treasury. A request to buy back the Lithuanian village too. H didn’t get enough money from his steward. He needed a lot of money at once. As a result, he sold the Lithuanian village back to the treasury, and the village was in a pretty bad state. It had 28 thousand rubles of government debt. That is, he took funds from the treasury for the village. A 52 thousand rubles debt. He borrowed money from his friends. What else to do? He was bankrupt. Treasury bought out his Lithuanian village. It gives him 40,000 in cash, as we would say now, to pay off his debts. He still does not have enough money. He writes acquittances to everyone. After writing a lot of acquittances, he goes off to war. It was another anti-French coalition, with Austerlitz and etc. Apparently, he didn’t pay off any of these acquittances over the next 10 years. There’s no record of that. He forgave everyone who owed him money. Bagration goes off to war, and his wife Kate goes to Vienna. For “some healing”. They never saw each other again. They didn’t divorce. She became the leading socialite in Europe's second capital after Paris. They called her "la belle ange nue", because she was as beautiful as an angel and always wore some incredibly transparent dress. She became the mistress of Chancellor Metternich of the Austrian Empire. She had a daughter from him. Then after a while they parted. She went to London. There she married an English lord, and also divorced him later. She took back her surname Bagration after her husband's death. She was a femme fatale. Bagration kept writing letters to the ambassador in Vienna to talk sense into his wife. "Let her come back, I will forgive her everything." She didn’t return. She said she felt very bad, she was bored with that poor Georgian. She was happy there with Metternich. He had no other choice but to seek comfort in the war. Stories from Russian history
Vladimir Medinsky
19th Century A few touches to remember. The Battle of Schöngraben. This was Bagration's pride. Napoleon tries to surround Kutuzov's army. Kutuzov hastily retreats. This was before Austerlitz. He has to hold off the crushing Napoleon somehow. And he puts up a barrier. It can't even be called a rearguard. A barrier. Six thousand soldiers against Napoleon's entire advancing army. Bagration was appointed to command the barrier. Kutuzov said goodbye to him. He blessed him and said, "God willing, we'll meet again." But it’s unlikely. What are 6 thousand soldiers? The goal was to hold out for at least a day, so that our troops had time to withdraw and not to be surrounded. Bagration not only held out... It was hard. At first they messed with Murat. He commanded the vanguard in Napoleon's army. He didn’t realize that it was only a small barrier. He thought it was Kutuzov's entire army. He stopped, negotiations began. Napoleon sent him an angry letter that said "attack immediately." Murat began to attack. It was a hard battle. They had equal losses. Bagration not only withdrew. He also managed to capture some French, 50-60-70 men, some French banner. He was an incredible hero. He stood alone with a small unit. His casualties were 50%. Every other man was either killed or seriously wounded. Back then the wounded didn’t tend to survive. Others were taken prisoner. A hero indeed. After that were Austerlitz, Preisis Eilau, Friedland. And everywhere Bagration, whom for some reason we always imagine attacking on horseback, was always in the rearguard, was always holding the blow, always retreating in an organized manner. And if you look at, for example, the information about Austerlitz, where Bagration and Bolkonsky were together again. – It was the most organized part of the army, which was cohesive, never fled. He had everything under control and was incredibly cold-blooded. This completely contradicts the image that we have of him, that he's hot-blooded, he's Georgian, he shouted in 1812: "We'll throw our caps at Napoleon”. That's all true. Indeed, he shouted and even wrote about it. But he was completely different in battle. He was cold-blooded, reserved. It was as if the man changed completely. He had a good eye, like Suvorov, and made no rash decisions. Bagration then returns to St. Petersburg, to Moscow an absolute hero. Kutuzov lost Austerlitz, Bagration didn’t lose anything. He won all the small battles, and during the big battles he held on till the end. He becomes incredibly popular both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow. Like an ancient hero. He is called to all receptions. All the members of the Unspoken committee go to meet Bagration. They were all about the same age. Thirty or forty years old. They were all friends. Alexandra Naryshkina, his mistress of many years, who gave birth to several of his children, was with Bagration all the time because he was incredibly trendy. There’s Bagration fashion. There were Bagration's buckshirts, cloaks. He was again at court all the time. He lunches and dines there. The widowed Empress, Alexander's mother, was very attentive to him and loved him a lot. Next comes the most interesting part. Bagration was suspected of having a love affair with the Emperor's sister, Catherine. Catherine was also the name of his wife, who was in Vienna. So it was his second Catherine. The daughter of Paul I. Catherine. Alexander's beloved sister. The smartest, brightest, most beautiful one. She was still young at the time. She was 19 years old. Napoleon will ask her to marry him later. She will refuse him. She was in love with Bagration. We don't know, of course, how far their relationship went. We know that the two of them were walking in parks, holding hands. Everyone wrote that it happened for a reason. That she wasn't dating anyone but Bagration. That they corresponded. Whether they did or not, we don't know. But nevertheless. When Bagration died of his wounds in 1812, Catherine was already a married lady. She was married to a good man, Prince Oldenburgsky. She will live in Tver. She will open hospitals for the wounded there, care for the wounded as a nurse. Her husband, the prince, will get ill in the hospital and die young. Catherine wrote to Alexander to get her correspondence with Bagration immediately, because she was very afraid of a scandal. Imagine, Napoleon was in Moscow. The war is in full swing. Alexander was in St. Petersburg preparing for the worst. Nevertheless he sends messengers urgently to the village where Bagration died, in the Vladimir region. They sealed with the tsar's seal all of Bagration's papers. He personally sorts out all his letters. Looks for compromising letters from his sister to Bagration. And writes to her that he personally checked everything, and didn’t find a single compromising letter. Apparently, everything was destroyed by Knyaz Peter himself. Only three female portraits were found. It’s not difficult to guess that they were portraits of Catherine Romanova, Catherine - his wife, whom he must have continued to love. And the portrait of the widowed Empress who always helped him. Emperor Paul's wife. Bagration always carried these three women's portraits with him everywhere. Bagration commands various military units. He takes part in the war with the Swedes. He takes part in the war with the Turks. I’m not going to go into detail here. He was never considered a strategist. People thought he was a good tactical general. And strategy was Suvorov’s, Kutuzov’s, even Barclay’s thing. Bagration was just a lucky guy. We think of him as the French do of Murat. A dashing fellow, nothing more. Surprisingly, Napoleon spoke well of Bagration. After Friedland he said that he was the best Russian general. The most gifted one and the bravest. The War of 1812 begins. At that time Bagration commands the army, which has to join Barclay de Tolly's army. Barclay's army was three times larger. Bagration, being a genius of retreat, dodges the French pursuing him. At Smolensk they join Barclay de Tolly’s army. Then begins the classic quarrel known from all the movies. Bagration wants to attack, to give a general battle, and Barclay wants to retreat. Barclay was certainly right in that argument. They were of equal rank. By the way, Barclay was a general of infantry and Bagration was also a general of infantry. In modern language, they were colonel-generals. One was a commander of an army and the other was a commander of an army. Barclay was also Minister of War, but it didn’t matter. Because by those back then the Minister of War was like the chief steward. He was not in charge of command, but of manning, supply. So who would be in charge? There was no order. Alexander didn't appoint anyone. They were both made generals by the same imperial decree on the same day. And then Bagration shouted: "I'm in charge, because I'm written higher in the decree." I am “Bag”, and he is “Bar”. Alphabetically. "He's below me, so I'm in charge. I'm in charge. But nobly I concede the right of primacy to Barclay. But I don't agree with his orders. But I will obey him. But everything he says is wrong. He's German. He doesn't love Russia. He doesn't understand the Russian soldier. We must fight. We have to attack those French. I’ve always beaten them, and I'll beat them again”. For some reason it’s not written in the textbooks, but Bagration proposed to deal a preemptive strike on Napoleon before the war of 1812. Sounds relevant. Napoleon had amassed a gigantic army on the Nieman. Which, quite clearly, was about to come at us. Bagration said we shouldn't wait. We must not wage war on our territory. Our western regions are the richest. We must strike a preemptive blow, defeat Napoleon and then retreat immediately. Alexander weighed up this plan and acted very wisely. He said that if we attacked, we would lose the victim's political advantage. Secondly, we would not attack France, but the land of Prussia and Austria. They are pro Napoleon because of need, but they are our potential allies. If we start a war in Prussian and Austrian territory and in the territory of the Duchy of Warsaw, they will become our enemies. We will have to burn their villages, smash them, destroy their warehouses. Why should we fight with those who would then support us? So Alexander waited and tried to provoke Napoleon. Napoleon didn't want to attack either. He certainly wanted to defeat us, but not to be the first to attack. But since 600,000 soldiers can't wait, they are there and they have to eat. It's very costly. Napoleon finally gave up. He decided that it was time. As you know, the Niemen was crossed and it all ended badly. So Bagration continued to push his agenda. That we should give a general battle. Why should we retreat? It won't be pretty from here on. In all his letters he writes very badly about Barclay. He writes to the tsar, the other generals. They fight in public in the presence of their subordinates, which is beyond good and evil. Bagration shouts at him in his terrible Georgian accent: "You are a German!" Barclay, who’s German shouts: “Do you think you are Russian? You are just a fool!” Everyone listens to them. Miloradovich says gentlemen, let’s go out, the commanders-in-chief are talking. Let’s leave the room. As a result Kutuzov was appointed as the superior. Stories from Russian history
Vladimir Medinsky
19th Century At Borodino Bagration was flawless. He was the example of courage. I’m not going to tell you the content of the Battle of Borodino, because I’m not a specialist here. But we can imagine that Kutuzov didn’t know where the blow would fall. He stretched out the army. Bagration was in charge of the left flank. Barclay was in charge of the right flank. Bonaparte's strategy was simple. He wanted to take the army and roll it up. That is, he didn’t lead a frontal attack, he hit the flank. He had to tear up that flank, to go to the rear, and crush the army from the rear. And he gathered all his power to hit the left flank. Where the Bagration fleches were. He was forming an enormous advantage in this direction. Our forces were equal. Only Bonaparte was punching with his fist. His advantage in artillery and manpower was 2 - 3 times bigger than ours. Bagration's fleches changed hands several times. What did Bagration's fleches look like? I’ll give you two statistical figures to make it clear. General Neverovsky’s division. By the end of the day one of the regiments of this division had 128 soldiers and one sergeant alive, and no officers at all. Neverovsky himself was wounded several times during the battle. But by some miracle he survived. He lived until 1813. In 1813 he died in the Foreign campaign. Vorontsov's division. This is my favorite hero. An aristocrat, a count, one of the richest men in the empire. It’s his Vorontsov’s Palace in the Crimea. He comes from a very noble family, but that does not prevent him from being wounded in the melee at Borodino. As Vorontsov later recalled, there were about three hundred men in the division by the evening inspection. And they had a division of four thousand men. Losses of killed and wounded were over 90 %. That’s what was going on at the Bagration's fleches. One of the counterattacks was led by Bagration personally. He was wounded. We can't reconstruct exactly when he was wounded. Because he hid his wound. Fragments of the burst core hit him in the thigh. He was on his horse. He didn’t show it. The blood spurted. He keeps commanding for a while, and then he just faints and falls off his horse from blood loss. He was evacuated. He doesn't die that day. He suffers for another 17 days. The wound begins to fester. Many doctors examined him. At first he refuses amputation, then the doctors say they can't amputate him anymore because they're afraid he won't survive it. He was taken to the village of his friend General Golitsyn in the Vladimir region. The village of Sima. He died there 17 days later. He still tried to give some orders, wrote a will. Tried to give some instructions. There were no antibiotics. The wound opened up. Pus poured out of it. And in the last few days - worms. He died in great agony. He didn’t scream, didn’t cry. In his will he mentioned to reward with money, I quote: "Serving under his lordship the retired Major Kotov, the promoted to lieutenant colonel Nevsky, valet Joseph Gavi, two employees Samoilo Ivanov and Yegor Sobolin, two cooks and two non-commissioned officers." He also released his personal serfs: Osip Rudakov, Matvei Lovtsevich, Peter Smirnov, Andreyan Mikheev and Andrei Yagodin. The list of serfs was closed. That was all his property. There were no orders about the villages, land in the will, because by that time everything had been sold to the treasury, mortgaged and remortgaged. I must say that at the time of the War of 1812, the military nobility was somehow disconnected from the people. In fact, 90% of the officers of the Russian army and 50% of the generals, didn’t have any estates at all, like Bagration, but lived on bonuses. After 25 years of active service, it was possible to get a pension of 1/3 of the salary. O told you about the amount of the salary. The golden dream of any officer was to somehow be promoted to major or lieutenant colonel, in order to buy a village with 30 serf souls and not to die of hunger in old age. Barclay de Tolly will become Field Marshal General and full Cavalier of the Officer's George for the capture of Paris. Then in 1812 in all seriousness he wrote a petition to the emperor. The fact is that when they awarded some kind of order, in response to the award you had to pay a certain financial amount to the Order’s fund, because pensions were paid from that money. Everyone who was awarded that Order contributed certain amount of money, perhaps 100 rubles. And later that money is used to pay their retirement money. And Barclay de Tolly writes: "Thank you for the decoration, but I don’t have 300 rubles. I beg you to postpone or relieve me of contributing this money”. Vorontsov, while being in charge of our expeditionary corps in Paris, paid off all the debts of Russian officers in restaurants, hotels, their private debts, out of his personal funds after the end of the war. Because many of them had no money. But honor had to be guarded, so he sold several estates and contributed, according to various reports, a million and a half rubles of personal funds, so that not a single Russian officer in France who owed money. Later he will be governor-general of Novorossia, and the Crimea, and viceroy in the Caucasus. He used to say: "People with power and wealth should live in a way that people would forgive them”. Stories from Russian history
Vladimir Medinsky
19th Century Bagration's ashes on the initiative of his aide Denis Davydov were later moved to the Borodino field, where he was solemnly buried in the presence of Emperor Nicholas I. In the 30s Bagration's grave at Borodino was destroyed and plundered. It was written in the Perestroika years that it the Soviet power was responsible for that. It’s not clear. The fact is that in the 1930s, there was a totally different trend, a trend for the return of historical memory. Movies were being made about Suvorov, Peter the Great, Alexander Nevsky. So it’s not clear why one would destroy Bagration's grave. On the contrary, a museum started working there. There’s a document that states that in 1932 under the direction of the head of the People's Commissariat department which was in charge of culture, Radus Zenkovich, the monument was sold for scrap. In 1937, the case was investigated by the NKVD. It was declared sabotage. Zenkovich was found to have a patron, a certain representative of the Mossovet, Filatov, and everyone was shot. There’s a suspicion that Radus Zenkovich knew that Bagration was buried with his orders and valuables. So they just plundered his grave and that's all. Then in the late Soviet years (1985-1986) the remains of Bagration's skeleton and his uniform were found. We are pretty sure that they belonged to him. They were all reburied there, at Borodino. We cannot say that we’ve forgotten about him. No, of course we haven't. We have the town of Bagrationovsk, where he fought heroically. That is Preisisch-Eylau, former East Prussia. At the Millennium Monument in Novgorod there’s a statue of Bagration among the 120 most celebrated Russian heroes of the time. There are many monuments to him both in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are many streets that carry his name. Even one of the most famous operations during World War II had the name "Bagration" for a reason. We cannot say that he’s forgotten. No, he is not forgotten as a military commander. His order speaks of him as a man. An order from the summer of 1812. "All soldiers of lower ranks, and officers must undress and take off their shoes before going to bed. It’s obligatory to make sure daily that the soldiers drink kvass, that fresh bread is delivered to them, and there must be plenty of wine and pepper”. He believed that pepper was very good for prophylaxis. Not without a reason. Because there were many stomach poisonings. And wine was vodka only not such strong vodka. "The officer is obliged to arrange a weekly bath for the soldier in a campaign, and to see to it that the soldier changes his shirts as often as possible and never wears anything dirty and sweaty." They had white shirts. Officers were personally responsible for the health of soldiers entrusted to them in military units. If a soldier was sick, the officer would be punished. Soldiers were not sick and were clean. We all worship Europe, but remember how the boastful Napoleon once wrote to Josephine that he had been sleeping for two weeks in the Russian campaign without taking off his boots. It's scary to even imagine the smell. It wasn’t like that in our army. In conclusion, I’d like to say that we picture Bagration the wrong way. Because we picture him as the master of the offensive. In fact, he was the best organizer of rearguard battles, retreats, and cover-ups. As at Schöngrabern, Austerlitz, Friedland, in the Alps, where he covered Suvorov’s rear. And his most remarkable feat as a military leader in 1812 - is not the battle at Bagration's fleches, it’s the month-long retreat under Napoleon's onslaught. His unit covered 800 km in a month. That is, 30 kilometers a day. This is an incredible pace of retreat with combat. He accomplished his task. After this month-long march, he joined Barclay and saved the army. We think that he’s a Caucasian hotshot, but in reality he’s a very prudent and cautious military commander. That's what everybody always pointed out. I told you the horrible story about his wounds. At that time it was thought in medicine that the disease comes out with pus. That is, if the wound was festering, the pus would simply drain out and that was it. Bagration should not be remembered this way, but as in his ceremonial portrait hanging in the Hermitage in the Gallery of Heroes of the War of 1812. Because that’s what Bagration looked like at Borodino. We know that before the Battle of Borodino the soldiers and officers were dressed in clean clothes. In white shirts, wore white gloves and polished uniforms. Bagration led the soldiers in a counterattack with all his orders on his chest, wearing gold epaulettes. And with the ribbon of St. Andrew over his shoulder. This’s how we should remember him. Our great compatriot. A real Russian general. As he said about himself, a real Russian. Peter Bagration. Thank you for your attention, thank you for your love of Russian history. See you next time.
