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Count

Previous to the reign of Peter the Great there were no counts in Russia. The first Russian count was Admiral Golowin ; but even he owed his rank to the favor, not of his own Sovereign, but of the Emperor Leopold I, who in 1701 created him a count of the Holy Roman Empire. The same rank was similarly bestowed in 1702 on Alexander Menscliikoff, the friend, Minister, and General of the Czar. The first person whom Peter himself raised to the rank of count was Field-Marshal Scheremetieff, in 1706. At subsequent dates he created eight boyards counts, among them three Apraxin and one Tolstoj. Among the counts of Catherine II there were five Orloffs and two Potemkins. The first person created count by the Emperor Nicholas was the colonel of the Guards, Alexis Orloff, now Prince and Ambassador at Paris. The first created by Alexander II was General Osten-Sacken, of Crimean fame.

Subsequently the Emperor Alexander II raised to the rank of count 20 persons who have distinguished themselves by exceptional civil or military services, and nearly all of whom are well known by reputation in Western Europe. Among them are two Generals Perowsky, Generals Liitke, Liiders, Grabbe, two Mourdvieff, Kotzebue, Loris-Melikoff, Paul Ignatieff, Miljutin; the Minister's Lanskoi and Tolstoj, the Ambassador Baron Brunnow, and the Councillor of State, Baron Korff. General Todleben was the 157th Count in the order of creation, created in 1880.

Fedor Aleksyeevich, Count Golovin, (d. 1706), Russian statesman, learned, like so many of his countrymen in later times, the business of a ruler in the Far East. During the regency of Sophia, sister of Peter the Great, he was sent to the Amur to defend the new Muscovite fortress of Albazin against the Chinese. In 1689 he concluded with the Celestial empire the treaty of Nerchinsk, by which the line of the Amur, as far as its tributary the Gorbitsa, was retroceded to China because of the impossibility of seriously defending it. In Peter's grand embassy to the West in 1697 Golovin occupied the second place immediately after Lefort. It was his chief duty to hire foreign sailors and obtain everything necessary for the construction and complete equipment of a fleet. On Lefort's death, in March 1699, he succeeded him as admiral-general. The same year he was created the first Russian count, and was also the first to be decorated with the newly-instituted Russian order of St Andrew. The conduct of foreign affairs was at the same time entrusted to him, and from 1699 to his death he was "the premier minister of the tsar." Golovin's first achievement as foreign minister was to supplement the treaty of Carlowitz, by which peace with Turkey had only been secured for three years, by concluding with the Porte a new treaty at Constantinople (June 13, 1700), by which the term of the peace was extended to thirty years and, besides other concessions, the Azov district and a strip of territory extending thence to Kuban were ceded to Russia. He also controlled, with consummate ability, the operations of the brand-new Russian diplomatists at the various foreign courts. His superiority over all his Muscovite contemporaries was due to the fact that he was already a statesman, in the modern sense, while they were still learning the elements of statesmanship. His death was an irreparable loss to the tsar, who wrote upon the despatch announcing it, the words " Peter filled with grief."

Suvorov first distinguished himself when he defeated the armies of both Pulawskies, took Cracow by storm, and was accredited with the triumphant termination of the Polish campaign. The first partition of Poland soon followed, a treaty being signed at Petersburg, 5th August, 1772. The year after a war with the Turks broke out, and Suvorov having won three victories over the troops of Mustapha III, effected a junction with General Kamenskay, and in a fourth victory put an end to the contest. In 1774, Pugatschew, a Cossack of the Don, organized a formidable insurrection. Suvorov encountered and overthrew the insurgents. In 1783 he subjugated the Kuban Tartars. Four years after, the second Turkish war afforded him many opportunities for displaying his splendid strategic talents. The campaigns of 1788 and 1789 were terminated by the battles of Fokshani, Rymnik, and the storming of Ismail. To all this brilliant success Suvorov mainly contributed. The Empress Catherine, in recognition of these services, raised him to the dignity of a Russian Count, with the title of Rymnikski, suggested by the victory gained on the banks of the river Rymnik.

The Russian Minister who loomed largest in the eyes of Europe during the reign of Nicholas I was undoubtedly Count Nesselrode, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was raised to the dignity of Chancellor of the Empire and was a prime favorite at Court. Count Nesselrode was a German by birth who had never learned Russian, which language was avoided in all communications of the Foreign Office, even verbal. Of him A.Th.von Grimm writes that he was the most fruitful source of social pleasures at the Court of the Empress. " His statesmanlike qualities he shared," we are told, " with his contemporaries, Talleyrand, Metternich, and Pozzo di Borgo ; but in the sense of the Aristippian philosophy, he was not only the most accomplished, but one of the wisest men of any time; he understood the art of living as Horace recommends in his Epistles. Equally removed from arrogance and from obsequious servility, his manner was conciliatory and propitiatory, and the most benevolent expression beamed from his large clear eyes. No offensive word ever escaped his lips, and even under the most trying circumstance he could always control himself and the words he uttered. Schnitzler, who is on the whole fair and impartial, describes Count Nesselrode as a mediocrity, whose adroitness and suppleness Deceived every support from his home influences, and who was too good a courtier not to change his principles whenever circumstances made it necessary. Nesselrode's family was of Westphalian origin; the Nesselrodes are Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, and therefore the Chancellor has always positively refused the title of Russian Count which the Emperor has repeatedly offered him. It is not thus that Russians acted who, like him, and long before him, were Counts of the Holy Roman Empire; the Golovines and the Menstchickoffs have never hesitated for an instant to accept the titles of their country, but Count Nesselrode is not enough of a courtier to be national, and thinks that a title of the Holy Empire is highly preferable to its Russian equivalent.