Robert Nisbet Bain

“ He compelled the poetry of art to draw nearer to life and nature, extended its boundaries and made it more generally intelligible and popular. He wrote not for one class or school but for the whole nation. He introduced the popular element into literature, but at the same time elevated and ennobled it. What Petöfi had done for lyrical he did for epic poetry. ”

“ Though frequently threatened with terrible penalties by Peter the Great for his incurable vice of peculation, Apraksin, nevertheless, contrived to save his head, though not his pocket, chiefly through the mediation of the good-natured empress, Catharine, who remained his friend to the last, and whom he assisted to place on the throne on the death of Peter. Apraksin was the most genial and kind-hearted of all Peter’s pupils. He is said to have never made an enemy. ”

“ The commissariat scandals which came to light after the peace of Tilsit convinced the emperor that nothing short of the stern and incorruptible energy of Arakcheev could reach the sources of the evil, and in January 1808 he was appointed inspector-general and war minister. When, on the outbreak of the Swedish war of 1809, the emperor ordered the army to take advantage of an unusually severe frost and cross the ice of the Gulf of Finland, it was only the presence of Arakcheev that compelled an unwilling general and a semi-mutinous army to begin a campaign which ended in the conquest of Finland. ”

“ In 1788 he entered the corps of noble cadets in the artillery and engineering department, where his ability, especially in mathematics, soon attracted attention. In July 1791 he was made an adjutant on the staff of Count N. I. Saltuikov, who (September 1792) recommended him to the cesarevich Paul Petrovich as the artillery officer most capable of reorganizing the army corps maintained by the prince at Gatchina. Arakcheev speedily won the entire confidence of Paul by his scrupulous zeal and undeniable technical ability. ”

“ The miserable condition of his country, and his own very precarious situation, weighed heavily upon his sensitive soul, and he suffered severely both in mind and body. On the other hand reflection on past events made clear to him not only the sufferings but the defects and follies of the national heroes, and from henceforth, for the first time, we notice a bitterly humorous vein in his writings. ”

“ ANNE (1693–1740) , empress of Russia, second daughter of Tsar Ivan V., Peter the Great’s imbecile brother, and Praskovia Saltuikova. Her girlhood was passed at Ismailovo near Moscow, with her mother, an ignorant, bigoted tsaritsa of the old school, who neglected and even hated her daughters. Peter acted as a second father to the Ivanovs, as Praskovia and her family were called. In 1710 he married Anne to Frederick William, duke of Courland, who died of surfeit on his journey home from St Petersburg. ”

“ He contributed more than any one else to the erection of the grand-duchy into an autonomous state, and was its first and best governor-general. The plan of the Russian defensive campaigns is, with great probability, also attributed to him, and he gained Alexander over to the plan of uniting Norway with Sweden. ”

“ Five months later he was again in disgrace, the emperor dismissing him on the strength of a denunciation subsequently proved to be false. It was a fatal step on Paul’s part, for everything goes to prove that he would never have been assassinated had Arakcheev continued by his side. During the earlier years of Alexander, Arakcheev was completely overlooked. Only on the 27th of April 1803, was the count recalled to St Petersburg, and employed as inspector-general of the artillery. ”

“ For these great services he was made a senator and admiral-general of the empire. His last expedition was to Reval in 1726, to cover the town from an anticipated attack by the English government, with whom the relations of Russia at the beginning of the reign of Catharine I. were strained almost to breaking-point. ”

“ From Naples Armfelt communicated with Catherine II., urging her to bring about by means of a military demonstration a change in the Swedish government in favour of the Gustavians. The plot was discovered by the regent’s spies, and Armfelt only escaped from the man-of-war sent to Naples to seize him, with the assistance of Queen Caroline. He now fled to Russia, where he was interned at Kaluga, while at home he was condemned to confiscation and death as a traitor, and his unjustly accused mistress Magdalena Rudenschöld was publicly whipped to gratify an old grudge of the regent’s. ”

“ It lasted four years and a half, and cost her a hundred thousand men and millions of roubles; and though invariably successful, she had to be content with the acquisition of a single city (Azov) with a small district at the mouth of the Don. ”