Nicholas Repnin
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Prince Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin (March 11, 1734 N.S.–May 12, 1801 N.S.) was an Imperial Russian statesman and general from the Repnin princely family who played a key role in the downfall of Polish statehood.
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[edit] Rule of Poland
Born in Saint Petersburg, Prince Repnin served in the Imperial Army under his father, Prince Vasily Anikitovich Repnin, during the Rhenish campaign of 1748, and subsequently resided for some time abroad, where he acquired "a thoroughly sound German education". He also participated in the Seven Years' War in a subordinate capacity. In 1763, Emperor Peter III sent him to Prussia as ambassador. The same year Catherine transferred him to Poland as minister plenipotentiary; in Warsaw, he was to have an affair with Izabela Fleming.[1]
In effect, due to the level of Russian control of the Polish government, he was an effective ruler of the country,[2] with special instructions to form a pro-Russian faction from among the various Protestants, who were to receive equal rights with the Catholics. Repnin believed that the Protestants were not significant enough to benefit Russia; at the same time, the Protestant community itself petitioned Empress Catherine, requesting not to be involved.
In order to further Russian interests, he encouraged the creation of two Protestant konfederacjas (of Sluck and Toruń) and later, one Catholic (Radom Confederation, led by Karol Stanisław "Panie Kochanku" Radziwiłł).[3] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Repnin's correspondence reveals that he disliked type of politics he was required to engage in. Nevertheless, he obeyed his instructions, and used various means to forced the Sejm of 1767-1768 (the so-called Repnin Sejm) to concede on all points of dispute.[4] Before the Sejm, he ordered the capture and exile to Kaluga of some vocal opponents of his policies,[5] namely Józef Andrzej Załuski[6] and Wacław Rzewuski. The immediate result was the rbellious Confederation of Bar, which practically destroyed the ambassador's strategy.[7]
[edit] Military career
Repnin resigned his post to lead troops in against the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War. At the head of an independent command in Moldavia and Wallachia, he prevented a large Ottoman army from crossing the Pruth (1770), distinguished himself at the actions of Larga and Kagul, and captured Izmail and Kilia. In 1771 he received the supreme command in Wallachia and occupied Bucharest. A quarrel with the commander-in-chief, Rumyantsev, then induced him to send in his resignation, but in 1774 he participated in the capture of Silistria and in the negotiations which led to the peace of Kuchuk-Kainarji. In 1775-76 Repnin and his factotum, Yakov Bulgakov, represented Russian interests at the Porte.
On the outbreak of the War of the Bavarian Succession he led 30,000 men to Breslau, and at the subsequent congress of Teschen, where he was Russian plenipotentiary, compelled Austria to make peace with Prussia.
During the second Turkish war (1787-92) Repnin was, after Alexander Suvorov, the most successful of the Russian commanders. He defeated the Ototmans at Salcia, captured the whole camp of the seraskier, Hassan Pasha, shut him up in Izmail, and was preparing to reduce the place when he was forbidden to do so by Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin (1789). On the retirement of Potemkin in 1791, Repnin succeeded him as commander-in-chief, and immediately routed the grand vizier at Machin, a victory which compelled the Ottomans to accept the truce of Galaţi (July 31, 1791).
[edit] Declining years
After the Second Partition of Poland, he was made governor-general of the newly acquired Lithuanian provinces, where he also commanded the Russian forces during the Kosciuszko Insurrection. The Emperor Paul I raised him to the rank of field-marshal (1796), and, in 1798, sent him on a diplomatic mission to Berlin and Vienna in order to detach Prussia from France and unite both the Habsburg Monarchy and Prussia against the First French Republic. Unsuccessful, he was dismissed from service upon his return, and died in Riga.
Although he had an illegitimate son, Ivan Pnin, and it was widely rumoured that Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was the fruit of Repnin's liaison with Izabela Fleming,[8] his legitimate children were three daughters. Upon his death, as the male line of the Repnins became extinct, Alexander I permitted his grandson Prince Nikolai Volkonsky to take the name Repnin and coat of arms of his grandfather.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Catholic Encyclopedia article "Poland"
- Richard Butterwick, Poland's Last King and English Culture, Oxford University Press, 1998
- Giacomo Casanova, History of My life, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997
- Isabel De Mandariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, Phoenix Press, 2002
- John P. LeDonne, The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831, Oxford University Press United States, 2004
- Gerhard Albert Ritter, Frederick the Great, University of California Press, 1975
