Mikhail Semyonovich HSH Prince Vorontzow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Semyonovich_Vorontsov

Count, Prince (since 1845), His Serene Highness Prince (since 1852)

The extraordinarily eventful and active life of Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov began in St.Petersburg on 19th May 1782, in the house at Malaia Morskaia Street. Catherine II sent a jewelled snuff-box in honour of his birth. His early childhood was spent in Venice, and then England, which his father Count Semen Romanovich had chosen as a suitable place to carry out his diplomatic duties, and also, importantly, so that his children could receive the best education of the day. Semion Romanovich was extremely exacting in his choice of separate tutors and teachers for each of his children. His son received a very broad education, covering subjects from the humanities, languages, natural science, mathematics and architecture to horse-riding, the use of firearms and visits to English factories, worldly gatherings, parliament and Russian warships. Even as a small child, he displayed a passionate desire to pursue a military career, and he followed the successes of Suvorov's forces with keen attention. His father brought him up to be patriotic. Believing that the revolution which had started in France would soon be replicated in Russia, the Russian ambassador taught his son to be a craftsman, so that he might occupy a worthy place in his country after the revolution. Naturally enough, the boy also learned the art of diplomacy, acting as secretary to his father.

   It should be noted that the ambassador was not particularly wealthy at this time, especially during the months of Paul's reign when he was dismissed and his lands confiscated. At that time the family was forced to live in debt, with the help of friends in English banking circles. On the accession of Alexander I, Semen Romanovich had his post and properties restored to him, and his son, on attaining his majority in 1801, set off for Russia with a single suitcase and without servants. 

Registered at birth as Corporal Bombardier in the Life Guard of the Preobrazhenskii regiment, and court chamberlain at the age of sixteen, Mikhail Semenovich could, on his arrival in Russia, have taken up the very highest positions at court and in the army. Yet he asked to be merely a lieutenant in the Guards, and after a year's service in the capital he grew bored, and with the help of his uncle, Aleksandr Romanovich, went to serve in the real army, in the Caucasus. From that point on, the young aristocrat was on the battlefield practically without a break for about twenty years. Up until 1805, he was fighting in the Caucasus, where he reached the rank of major and earned three medals, coming close to dying in January 1804. From 1805-1807 he fought in Pomerania and became a colonel. 1809-1812 he fought the Turks under Bagration on the Danube, winning another two medals, a diamond-studded gold sword for his services at Rushchuk, and the rank of major-general (in 1810).
And it was thus, in Bagration's army, that Vorontsov entered the war of 1812. At Borodino, his combined grenadiers defended the famous Shevardinskii redoubt, a fortress near the village of Semionovskaia. By the end of the day on 26th August, of his division there remained only 300 soldiers and 3 officers. The commanding officer himself was wounded, shot in the leg, and was sent back from the front, to the Moscow house he had inherited from the Princess Dashkova (and which now houses the Moscow Conservatory).
At this time the valuables were being removed from the house for safety and loaded on to boats. The master ordered the loading of his possessions to be stopped, everything to be removed from the boats, and the wounded to be placed on board instead. Around 50 generals and officers were transported in this way to Vorontsov's Andreevskoie estate in Vladimir, where their injuries were treated at their host's expense. The library of several thousand books left behind in Moscow burned to the ground.
In December of that year Count Vorontsov, his wounds healed, returned to the front. He again distinguished himself in the campaign through Europe up to the fall of Paris. In February 1813 he was given the rank of lieutenant-general, a medal for the battle of Leipzig and one for the battle of Craon, where he fought Napoleon himself. In 1815, with some twelve years' experience of active service, Lieutenant-General Count Vorontsov wrote A Few Rules for Dealings with the Lower Ranks of the Twelfth Infantry Corps, the basic message of which was that both officers and men should be ruled by honour and ambition. It being humiliating to command the humiliated, punishment should be meted out in strict accordance with the law, and wilfulness should be eliminated. In August of that year, the Count was appointed commander of the Russian forces in Wellington's allied army, stationed in France from the end of the war until 1818.
The comments of the distinguished writer of the day, F.F.Vigel, who served for many years under Vorontsov, in his memoirs, are of particular interest [The Diary of Filip Filipovich Vigel, Part 1, p.76, Part 5, pp.138-139]. "Most recently the Russian army has had... two favourites: Vorontsov and Yermolov... Brave Vorontsov, who when still young, rich in gold and valour, preferred all the burdens and perils of a soldier's life to the pleasures and splendour of court, was a tender father to his men, and a comrade, friend and brother to his fellow officers." In 1818, Vigel travelled to the encampment/billets of the Russian forces in France (thirty thousand men), and this picture met his eyes: "I entered Russian territory. Ahead stood a wooden pillar, painted black and white with red stripes... On it was written, in Russian, the distance to each town and village, and, counting the number of versts to go, I travelled as if along the road to Moscow... Such impudence was thanks to Vorontsov... The Russians there were entitled to billets, but they were wealthy and preferred to live in greater style and show off their generosity... Our soldiers here are indeed fortunate: three years spent enjoying the spoils of victory and, following their leader's example, treating the local inhabitants with courtesy and pride and trying to win them round with kindness and money... In the space of a few days I was transported from central France to Russia! It was a home from home: cabbage soup, kasha, kulebyaka pies and blini washed down with a drink of kvass, double glazing, stoves with benches around them, company singing and a Russian sauna. The local populace declared themselves grateful and struck new medals in honour of the occupying army. When the troops left France, Vorontsov paid off his officers' debts - to the tune of one-and-a-half million.
In 1819, the Count married a wealthy relation of the Prince Potemkin, one Elizaveta Ksaver'evna Branitskaia, whom he had met in Paris.
From 1820-1823 Vorontsov was home from the wars. But our hero did not remain idle: he travelled extensively throughout Europe, bought lands in the Crimea from Paris, studied works on estates and parks in preparation for his own nest, and chose the site on which it was to be built. He was also involved in what one might term social works: in 1820 M.S. Vorontsov and A.S. Menshikov presented the tsar with a project for a new society which they offered to lead, based on the freeing of the serfs, and each of them offered to give his own serfs their freedom, begging His Majesty to allow them to persuade others to follow their example. They had the support of the Turgenev brothers and a number of other important figures. The tsar, however, did not consent. Vorontsov and Menshikov, together with S.Pototskii and A.A.Lobanov-Rostovskii, then founded the First Russian stagecoach society, which negotiated contracts with the Post Department and acquired rights to the conveyance of passengers between Moscow and St.Petersburg from 1820, and later to Vyborg, Imatra, Kiev, Kovno, etc..
It was Vorontsov's wish to serve in one of the Southern garrisons, and he finally obtained a posting, to the satisfaction of most of his relatives, friends and well-wishers. His appointment was as governor-general of Novorossia and Bessarabia. Novorossia at that time included the Southern Ukraine, the Northern shores of the Black Sea, and the Crimea. These lands did not become part of the Russian Empire until the late eighteenth century, and for the most part they were practically deserted. After some hesitation, Count Vorontsov chose Odessa as the site of his official residence, and for his private residence, the Crimea.
At this point in our story comes the round of the governor-general's daily life, the endless journeys through the province and, once every one or two years, travels right across Europe to England to visit his father and sister. In mid-1823, Vorontsov took the steam-ship he had had built on his estate with a steam engine brought from St.Petersburg out on the Dnieper river, much to the astonishment of passers-by. He then travelled by rowing boat to Ekaterinoslav to take up his post as governor-general. One of the first major problems that awaited him there was a six-year plague of locusts, as we know largely thanks to Soviet historical and literary accounts of the confrontation between Vorontsov and Pushkin. (We shall, however take the liberty of omitting this episode, as Pushkin spent less than a year in Odessa, and since it touches upon his life, special research involving a vast volume of literature would be necessary). In 1824, construction started on the houses in Odessa and Alupka. In 1825 Vorontsov battled with the bubonic plague in Izmail; and it was in the same year that saw the start of the eye disease which was to afflict him for over twenty years. It was at this time that the governor-general began to enter into direct contact with the Crimean Tartars and their religious leaders. Vorontov's contemporaries note that it was characteristic of him to maintain excellent relations with the local populace, be it in the Crimea, in Bessarabia, or, later on, in Tiflis (now Tbilissi).
In October of that year, Alexander I travelled to the Crimea, where he caught a fever and died. Vorontsov went to Taganrog to pay his respects to the deceased emperor, and it was here that he learned of the December 14th uprising. He wrote proudly in his diary that not a single person in Odessa was arrested for complicity in the affair. In 1826 he was appointed a member of the State Council, and in this new capacity sat at the first sessions of the special tribunal set up to try the Decembrists. He then went to Ackerman, near Odessa, for negotiations with Turkey, which resulted in an accord favouring Russia's interests, whereafter he took the astonished Turks for a ride on his strange and wonderful steam-boat. At the end of the year, Vorontsov was elected honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
It was during these years that Odessa began to develop as a major port and began to gain a reputation as a home to all of Europe. The town grew and acquired its famous steps, the monument to Richelieu, its palaces, roadways and sea-front. Vorontsov not only took charge of a number of projects and decisions, but pushed them through the local governing bodies, and he also brought over European engineers and doctors and even personally transported a set of surgical instruments from Britain for the town hospital. Odessa became a multinational trading town. At the court of the Vorontsovs in Odessa, a cultured society developed, with a theatre, a lyceum, an institute of oriental languages (founded by the Count himself), scientific societies (of agriculture, history and antiquities) and a public library (built up largely from the Count's private collection). Vorontsov himself kept an extremely rich private library, containing a great number of precious manuscripts and documents. He invited antiquarians to work with him, and, under fire in the Crimean War, he ordered the rescue of the collection before anything else. The public library, together with the merchants and industrialists, served to ensure that French and English culture became widespread across Southern Russia [Cf. Alekseev M.P., Essays and Research on English Literature, Leningrad, 1991, p. 308], and two semi-official newspapers came out in Russian and French, as well as a journal, the Novorossian Calendar.
Vorontsov found the Crimea, which he chose for himself and "cherished like a plaything, like a favourite child" [Aksakov I.S., Letters Home, 1844-49, Moscow, 1988, p. 449], practically deserted, and he had a policy of actively encouraging settlement in the region. He received tsars and their families at Alupka and persuaded them to keep estates of their own there, thus boosting the prestige of the area immensely in the eyes of the upper classes and in the press. He gave lands to his officials on the strict condition that they actively maintain them. It was during Vorontsov's time as governor-general that the Crimea's wine-growing trade developed, and the vineyards on his estates at Ai-Danil, Gurzuf and Massandra became world-class industrial concerns; wine experts and the choicest grape varieties of Europe were sent for, and wine-cellars, distilleries and breweries were built. Exotic plants were also introduced into the Crimea from all over the world. A road was constructed from Simferopol to the sea, linking Vorontsov's properties to the South coast and continuing along the shore to Sebastopol. The Crimea began supplying the whole of Russia with wine and exporting by the shipload to Europe. The enlightened Count was also interested in the history and antiquities of the Crimea and a keen supporter of archaelogical research; on his instructions, the plans of the ancient fortifications of the South Coast were reconstructed and the Bakhchisarai palace and the towers of the Aluston (Alushta) fortress restored.
In 1828 a steam-ship company began to operate on the Black Sea, the first vessel being brought over from Britain. In the same year, Nicholas I visited Odessa and appointed Vorontsov commander of the siege of Varna in place of Menshikov, who had been forced to relinquish his command due to shell shock. Within one-and-a-half months, Varna had surrendered, and the Count was awarded the honour of the diamond rifle. In 1829 he received the highest order of the empire, the order of St.Andrei the First-Called, for his brilliant conduct of the campaign and for the continuous maintenance of supply-lines. Returned to civilian duties, Vorontsov was again faced with epidemics of bubonic plague in Odessa, Bessarabia and the Crimea. Stamping out the plague was especially difficult in Sebastopol, where the sailors mutinied at the measures enforced to halt the spread of the disease. Vorontsov had to go in personally to restore order and conduct an inquiry into the matter (which was regarded, incidentally, as being extremely fair and lenient). During this time, his daughter was dying overseas, in spite of all his attempts to save her. Overall, the three years from 1830-32 were extremely difficult ones for Vorontsov's family life: away in England, first his son Mikhail died, and then his 88-year old father. These events would appear to have strengthened the Count's determination to build up his nest, since during the same period work increased on the construction of the Alupka estate and its design was altered.
In 1833, the Odessa-Constantinople Steam Communication Company was set up, with bases in the port of Yalta and Berdyansk. Yalta was developing rapidly, and in 1837 with the visit of the emperor it became the regional capital. Southern Russia was hit by very poor harvests in 1833, leaving 700,000 people without sustenance, but the governor-general managed to organise the transportation, storage and distribution of grain so effectively that not one person died of hunger. The Count also took an interest in tree plantations, following the experience of the German colonists, and the Mennonites in particular.
The development of Novorossia at this time was not achieved on the traditional basis of slave labour. According to the census of 1857, for example, only 6% of the population of the Crimea were serfs. Many runaway serfs fled to the South were they would not be pursued, and the growing towns, the navy and trade all had need of labour. Vorontsov's own views on the subject of slavery are expressed in his letter to Count P.D. Kiselev of 17 February 1837 [The Archives of Prince Vorontsov, ed. P.I. Bartenev, Moscow, 1870-97, vol. XXXVIII, pp.15-17]: "You honour me by asking my opinion on the serf question. My principles on the matter have long been known to you, and as regards practice, I am already so far from and so opposed to the methods both of the government and of the country as a whole, since its wealth is based on forced agricultural labour, that my ideas on the initial measures to take, or indeed of the scale of the obstacles to (not to say, the impossibility of) overcoming the prejudices and habits of the peasants and domestic servants are unlikely to meet with general approval. Nonetheless, since you ask my opinion... One safe way to start would be to put into practice, without delay, the proposals put forward and approved by the Emperor seven years ago for domestic serfs and those tied to the land to be made entirely separate... This first step would merely take us to the stage reached in some European countries two or three centuries ago; but it would nonetheless constitute a major advance, and indeed, I believe that such a move would lead to the careful yet rapid and rational emancipation of the serfs. It is truly unfortunate that the proposals were not acted upon when the last census was taken: within a very short space of time our ruler would have seen that he stood only to gain by the changes, and the reduction in the number of servants, which could be further speeded by means of a hefty tax on domestics, would be compensated by the emergence of a way of life which would have a tempering and civilising effect on the morals and customs of our land-owning classes. And in this way, this burden, which is the true shame of nineteenth-century Russia - the slavery of the individual -would be, if not eliminated, then at least speeded on its way... Everyone would be the richer for it, and the country itself would be richer, because a larger labour force would be available for industry and agriculture, and because the working population would be distributed for the common good and according to the quantity and quality of the land, rather than being handed out arbitrarily." Following the decree of 2nd April 1842 on bound peasants, Vorontsov was the first to express the wish to give the serfs on his estate at Murino outside St.Petersburg the status of bound peasants. "I take very great satisfaction in this matter, and if all goes well at Murino in the coming year and the peasants there begin to appreciate the advantages of their newly acquired social status, then I shall take a few bright peasants from our other estates and show them, and shall have no doubts about the success of the venture. Tell me, please, have perhaps a few landowners followed the example of Murino?" wrote Vorontsov in another letter to Kiselev [The Archives of Prince Vorontsov, vol. XXXVIII, p.103]. But his example was in fact only followed by Wittgenstein and the Pototskiis. A total of only 24,708 male serfs changed status. Vorontsov himself came up against a series of administrative obstacles and delays, so that it was only after repeated petitions that the matter finally went through. [Cf. Brokhauz and Efron's Encyclopaedia, St. Petersburg, 1895,1897, vol. XVIa, p.700] The history of the Count's attempts to bring about the abolition of serfdom went back a long way - not just to 1820, but to 1815, when he signed M.F. Orlov's petition to the tsar on the subject.
The demand for labour in Novorossia was indeed very great. The population of Odessa, for example, doubled between 1823 and 1849, to reach a total of 87,000. And this in spite of the war of 1828-29, an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1829, the cholera epidemic of 1830, the failure of the harvests in 1833, the plague again in 1837 and the cholera of 1848-49 [Cf. Brokraus & Efron, vol. XXIa, p.727]. (Vorontsov became so skilled at taking harsh organisational measures to halt the spread of contagious diseases which crossed the border from Turkey, that the simple fact of his arrival in an infected town was sufficient to inspire in the townsfolk complete confidence and strict observance of quarantine restrictions). And Odessa astonished and impressed visitors. In addition to the chapter in Pushkin's Eugene onegin devoted to the city, there were other comments: "Odessa in the 1830's combined all that was cultured, rich and refined in Russian society and which for one reason or another did not sit well with life in the capital or abroad. The southern climate, the warmth and sunshine for most of the year, the wonderful, gleaming, rainbow-hued Black Sea... the Italian opera... the resonant Italian voices in the streets, the cheapness of the free port, and generally just the freedom and ease of life in this half-foreign, half-Russian town, together with the enlightened and accessible nature of its governor-general, Mikhail Semionovich Vorontsov, inspired the warmest feelings for Odessa" [Dabizha V.D., "Nikolai Nikiforovich Murzakyevich, 1806-1883", in: Russkaya Starina, January 1887, vol. LIII, p. 5]. I.S. Aksakov wrote in November 1848: "I was struck by the trade and the entirely original physiognomy of the town. The sea with its wooden masts, the beautiful streets of flat-roofed, unplastered houses made of natural stone, the tree-lined embankments, the gleam and shine of European trade, the absence of heavy-handed bureaucracy - all this gives a pleasant initial impression. Do not judge Odessa as you would judge a Russian town. It is a market place of many races, where people have been brought together from different places by mutual advantage to form a single community. The town is an artificial construct, but not one which has been forcibly imposed, as St. Petersburg was. It is a town entirely constructed of foreign elements, bound together with fairly amicable Russian cement. Cosmopolitans and liberals - Duke Richelieu and Counts Langeron and Vorontsov - have invested it with a cosmopolitan character. Trade flourishes under Russian military protection, and is little concerned with the domestic politics of Russia itself - and Odessa is all trade... Everything is cheap here except for firewood, which, incidentally, is beginning to be replaced by coal from Ekaterinoslav. You will be surprised by the freedom -one might even say the lack of ceremony - which prevails in official circles here... Odessa... has no political importance whatsoever, and the life of the town is so suited to its natural surroundings that it becomes all the more natural for it" [Aksakov I.S., op.cit., pp. 408-9].
The provision of coal from Ekaterinoslav province which Aksakov mentions is also largely to the governor-general's credit. It is even said that he himself conducted successful experiments in Odessa and later in the Caucasus to convert wood-burning stoves to burn coal, thus solving the problem of the fuel supply. These coal deposits were to be the basis for industrial development in the Donbass region.
In December 1844, the sixty-two-year-old governor-general, by imperial command, became in addition governor-general of the Caucasus and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian forces with unlimited powers. At Tiflis he found "an abyss of confusion" [V.Tolstoy, "Prince Mikhail Semionovich Vorontsov" in: The Russian Archives, 1877, vol.111, p. 295]: everywhere the highlanders had the upper hand, and they were reducing to rubble all the previous victories of the Russian troops. The new leader found himself once again in the familiar chaos which he had known since his youth. Before entering into battle, he went to Moscow to meet his friend of many years and senior to him, A.P. Yermolov, and discuss the problems of the Caucasus with him. In St. Petersburg he received the tsar's personal instructions and was directed to take the capital Shamil aul Dargo by storm. The campaign for the capital, which commenced on 6th June 1845, was fraught with dangers, failed to achieve its purpose, and incurred immense losses. The Count himself led the charge, suffering the same privations as his troops and exposing himself to mortal dangers. Accounts of these events differ widely in their assessments, which is hardly surprising, since the imperial commands issued in St. Petersburg, when put into practice in the Caucasus, very nearly resulted in tragedy. I myself am not competent to judge Vorontsov's talents as a military leader, but on the evidence of his and Yermolov's vast wealth of experience of war in the Caucasus, it would seem reasonable to assume that he chose to lead his men into battle precisely because he knew that Nicholas's plan to take Shamil in a single assault was doomed to failure. And when Vorontsov ultimately succeeded in extricating himself from an extremely difficult situation without dishonour either to his superiors or to his calling, the Emperor elevated him to the rank of Prince in recognition of his services during the campaign and of the imperial debt owed him.
The Russian forces later went on to even greater victories, thanks to the greater order which the Prince managed to instil into their organisation and the changes he made to their battle tactics: he judged that rather than making sudden, swift attacks, it would be better to "follow a more offensive pattern, in more gradual but perhaps surer stages" ["Letters from M.S. Vorontsov to A.P. Yermolov," in: The Russian Archives, 1890, N's 2-4, p.181]. Vorontsov adapted the tactic of ecological warfare developed by Yermolov. Along the roadsides, the trees to double firing range would be felled and set fire to, and gradually a long line of fortifications would emerge. This deprived the highlanders of the opportunity to make surprise attacks, and cut off access to the fertile valleys where they found food. As a result, on Vorontsov's arrival on the scene, matters in the Caucasus "changed radically for the better" [Dondukov-Korsakov A.M., "Prince Mikhail Vorontsov," in: Starina i Novizna, 1902, p. 298].
Vorontsov's non-military achievements in the Caucasus were also extremely considerable. He won over the local aristocracy, made his decisions as public as possible, and in the space of three years created such order that life in the region became relatively calm and safe. As he had done in Novorossia, Vorontsov paid special attention to the development of trade, industry, roads, ports and arable farming in the Caucasus. The impression one gets from his diaries for these years [Vorontsov M.S., Extracts from the Diaries of M.S. Vorontsov, 1845-54, St. Petersburg, 1902] is of a heavy burden of daily administrative work, visits from high-ranking government figures, war, the illness of an already elderly man, and above all, endless journeying through the Caucasus and Novorossia. The Prince was concerned with the education of children of all classes, the preservation of antiquities, the construction of a theatre in Tiflis, and the rebuilding of Sofia Cathedral in Kiev. "His guiding thought was to create private capital in the lands which he governed, and thereby encourage private investment in the exploitation of the local natural resources" [V. Tolstoy, op.cit., p. 304). He was also given the title of His Highness.
Finally, in 1853, Vorontsov requested that he be relieved of his duties on health grounds. In the summer of 1856, on the day of Alexander II's coronation, he was made Fieldmarshal-General, and on 6th November, back in Odessa once more, he died.
It is true that Vorontsov spent half his life in colonial wars, that he was a high-ranking official in the service of an autocratic state, trusted by the emperor, and that he was an immensely rich and powerful man. Nonetheless, men such as he are rare in Russian history, men with such a record of service as organisers and creators, and the fruits of whose achievements we can still witness today. Even a superficial acquaintance with the life and works of Prince Vorontsov shows that his membership of the upper ranks of the aristocracy, military command and government apparatus is not sufficient to explain the whole of his personality. He clearly distinguished himself from the rest of that 1% of the population which made up the Russian nobility of the early nineteenth century. His most fundamental precepts led him to renounce both a career at court and a quiet life on his own estate, although he never broke with either life completely. Although he never wanted for money, thanks to his inheritance, he consciously chose the path of extremely full and responsible lifelong service. It is clear that Pushkin's "Half-milord, half-merchant" was more than simply a spiteful epigram. The poet had hit upon an essential feature of the governor-general's position. It would seem that the Prince had found himself a niche where he could be freer and less vulnerable; he used the advantages of his social position, but he strived, with some success, to avoid its pitfalls. He was an aristocrat, yet he made service to his country his life's work and was never idle. He was a member of the bourgeoisie - but without their mercantile and acquisitive ways. He was a powerful government official - but he took no pleasure in administration or the foolishness of red tape. These were the three sides of his character, but he was not slave to any one of them. Vorontsov was quite out of the ordinary, and his character was formed of three hypostases: he was an individual, an individual combination of Russia and the West, of friendship and command, nobility and privilege, business and luxury, poet and civil servant.

http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/russians/c_vorontsov.html

Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov (Михаи́л Семёнович Воронцо́в) (30 May 1782–18 November 1856), was a Russian prince and field-marshal, renowned for his success in the Napoleonic wars, and most famous for his participation in the Caucasian War from 1844 to 1853.

Life

The son of Count Semyon Vorontsov and nephew of the imperial chancellor Alexander Vorontsov, he spent his childhood and youth with his father in London, where he received a brilliant education. During 1803–1804 he served in the Caucasus under Pavel Tsitsianov and Gulyakov, and was nearly killed in the Zakatali disaster (January 15, 1804). From 1805 to 1807, he served in the Napoleonic wars, and was present at the battles of Pułtusk and Friedland. From 1809 to 1811 he participated in the Russo-Turkish War and distinguished himself in nearly every important action.

He commanded the composite grenadiers division in Prince Petr Bagration's Second Western Army during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. At the battle of Borodino his division was in the front line and was attacked by three French divisions under Marshal Davout. Vorontsov led several counter-attacks, sword in hand. Of the 4,000 men in his division only 300 survived the battle. Vorontsov was wounded, but recovered to rejoin the army in 1813. He commanded a new grenadiers division and fought at the battle of Dennewitz and the battle of Leipzig. In 1814, at Craonne, he brilliantly held out for a day against Napoléon in person. He was the commander of the corps of occupation in France from 1815 to 1818.

On 7 May 1823 he was appointed governor-general of New Russia, as the southern provinces of the empire were then called, and namestnik of Bessarabia. He may be said to have been the creator of Odessa and the benefactor of the Crimea, both places being graced with his brilliant residences. He was the first to start steamboats on the Black Sea in 1828. The same year saw the start of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 and Vorontsov succeeded the wounded Menshikov as commander of the forces besieging Varna, which he captured on 28 September 1828. In the campaign of 1829, it was through his energetic efforts that the plague, which had broken out in Turkey, did not penetrate into Russia. But perhaps the best remembered of all is his wife's (née Countess Branicka) liaison with Alexander Pushkin during the latter's stay in Odessa, which resulted in some of the finest poems in Russian language.

In 1844, Vorontsov was appointed commander-in-chief and viceroy of the Caucasus. For his campaign against Shamil, and especially for his difficult march through the dangerous forests of Chechnya, he was raised to the dignity of prince, with the title of Serene Highness. (Others describe his 1845 campaign as the successful withdrawal of his remaining forces after a near-disastrous over-penetration to capture the fort of Dargo.[1]) By 1848 he had captured two-thirds of Daghestan, and the situation of the Russians in the Caucasus, so long almost desperate, was steadily improving. In the beginning of 1853, Vorontsov was allowed to retire because of his increasing infirmities. He was made a field-marshal in 1856, and died the same year at Odessa.

The Odessa statue of Prince Vorontsov was unveiled in 1863. In front of the monument stands the Odessa Cathedral with the marble tombs of Prince Vorontsov and his wife. After the Soviets demolished the cathedral in 1936, Vorontsov's remains were secretly reburied at a local cemetery. The cathedral was rebuilt in the early 2000s. The remains of Vorontsov and his wife were solemnly transferred to the church in 2005.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%86%...

Граф, князь (с 1845 года), светлейший князь (с 1852 года)

В браке с 20.4.1819