Rumyantsev
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The Rumyantsev family (Румянцевы) were Russian counts prominent in Russian imperial politics in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The family claimed descent from the boyar Rumyanets who broke his oath of allegiance and surrendered Nizhny Novgorod to Vasily I of Moscow in 1391.
[edit] Alexander Ivanovich Rumyantsev
The first Rumyantsev to gain prominence, Alexander Ivanovich (1680 - 1749), enrolled in the Preobrazhensky regiment of guards in 1704. While he guarded the headquarters of Peter the Great, the monarch noticed him "for his great height and smart face". Peter made Alexander Ivanovich his servant and later recommended him to Peter Shafirov and Peter Tolstoy. In the service of these two courtiers, Rumyantsev carried out various diplomatic errands in Constantinople and in Persia. In 1720 he married Countess Maria Matveyeva, daughter and heiress of Count Andrey Matveyev.
After Peter I's daughter Elizabeth Petrovna came to the throne in 1741, Rumyantsev became a count and went to govern Malorossia, or Left-Bank Ukraine. It was he who negotiated and signed the Treaty of Åbo with Sweden. He died in Ukraine on March 4, 1749, leaving a son, Peter (see below), and a daughter, Daria, married to the Austrian count Wallenstein. His wife survived him by 40 years, and entertained Saint Petersburg society with the stories of her acquaintance with Louis XIV, Madame de Maintenon, and the Duke of Marlborough. When she died at the age of 90, Gavrila Derzhavin wrote a remarkable ode glorifying her virtues.
[edit] Peter Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky
Alexander's son Pyotr Alexandrovich, born on January 4, 1725 in Moscow, took his name from that of the ruling Emperor. As his mother spent much time in the company of Peter I, rumours suggested that the young Rumyantsev was the monarch's illegitimate son.
Pyotr Alexandrovich first saw military service under his nominal father in the war with Sweden (1741 - 1743). He personally carried to the Empress the peace treaty of Abo, concluded by his father in 1743. Thereupon he gained promotion to the rank of colonel. His first military glory dates from the great battles of the Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763), those of Gross-Jagersdorf (1757) and Kunersdorf (1759). In 1761 he besieged and took the Polish fortress of Kolberg, thus clearing for Russian armies the path to Berlin.
Throughout the reign of Catherine the Great, Rumyantsev served as supreme governor of Ukraine. In this post, which his father had held with so much honesty, Rumyantsev made it his priority to eliminate any autonomy of the hetmans and to fully incorporate the newly-conquered territories into the Russian Empire. Some accuse him of having promoted serfdom in New Russia, but the choice of such a policy remained out of his control.
With the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1768, Rumyantsev took command of the army sent to capture Azov. He thoroughly defeated the Turks in the Battles of Larga and Kagula, crossed the Danube and advanced to Romania. For these dazzling victories he became Field-Marshal and gained the victory title Zadunaisky (meaning "Trans-Danubian"). When his forces approached Shumla in 1774, the new Sultan Abdul Hamid I started to panic and sued for peace, which Rumyanstev signed upon a military tambourine at the village of Kuchuk-Kainarji.
At that point, Rumyantsev had undoubtedly become the most famous Russian commander. Other Catharinian generals, notably Potemkin, allegedly regarded his fame with such jealousy that they wouldn't permit him to take the command again. In times of peace, Rumyantsev expressed his innovative views on the martial art in the Instructions (1761), Customs of Military Service (1770), and the Thoughts (1777). These works provided a theoretical base for the re-organisation of the Russian army undertaken by Potemkin.
During the Second Russo-Turkish War, Zadunaisky suspected Potemkin of deliberately curtailing supplies of his army and presently resigned his command. In the Polish campaign of 1794 he once again won appointment as commander-in-chief, but his rival Suvorov actually led the armies into battle. On this occasion Rumyantsev didn't bother even to leave his Ukrainian manor at Tashan which he had rebuilt into a fortress. He died there on December 8, 1796, several months after Catherine's death.
[edit] Nikolay Petrovich Rumyantsev
As the story goes, old Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky grew enormously fat and avaricious, so that he pretended not to recognize his own sons when they came from the capital to ask for money. Neither of his children married, and the comital branch of the family went extinct upon their death.
Among these sons, only Count Nikolay Petrovich (1754 - 1826) reached the highest offices of state. Maintaining friendly terms with the future Alexander I and his mother Maria Fyodorovna, he served as Minister of Commerce (1802 - 1811) and President of the State Council (1810 - 1812). As foreign minister (appointed 1808), he advocated a closer alliance with France. On receiving the news of Napoleon's invasion of Russia (1812), he suffered a stroke and lost his hearing. When Napoleon entered Moscow, he advised the Emperor to dismiss Kutuzov and to seek peace at any cost. Eventually Alexander lost all confidence in Nikolay Petrovich, who retired in 1814 just before the Congress of Vienna. Nicholas Rumyantsev died on 3 January 1826 in St Petersburg.
During the years of his foreign service, Nikolay Petrovich amassed a huge collection of historic documents, rare coins, maps, manuscripts, and incunabula which formed a nucleus of the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow (subsequently transformed into the State Russian Library). Showing a keen interest in Russian history, Rumyantsev produced the first printed publications of several old Russian chronicles and ancient literary monuments of the Eastern Slavs. He also became a notable patron of the Russian voyages of exploration.
