Ivan Chernyshyov

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Count Ivan Grigoryevich Chernyshyov (or Tchernyshov) (1726 - 1797) was a Russian Field Marshal. He started his career serving under his more illustrious brother Zakhar Chernyshyov at the Russian missions in Copenhagen (1741) and Berlin (1742-45). In 1749 he was commanded to resign from diplomatic service and marry Countess Elizabeth Yefimovskaya, a cousin of Empress Elizabeth. During the reign of Catherine the Great he served in the Senate. In 1768, Chernyshov was appointed a Russian plenipotentiary in London. On his return to Russia two years later, he was made Vice-President of the Admiralty Board. Being on friendly terms with Nikita Panin, the tutor and closest advisor to the future Emperor Paul, he was promoted "Navy Field Marshal" upon the latter's ascension to the throne. By that time, Tchernyshov's health was giving out and he had been living abroad for five years. Tchernyshov's niece, Natalie Galitzine, better known at the Russian court as "Princesse Moustache", was romanticized by Pushkin under the name of The Queen of Spades in his eponymous story from 1834.