Denis Wassiljewitsch Davydow

Portrait of Davydov by George Dawe

Denis Davydov ( Russian Денис Васильевич Давыдов * July 16 ^{. Jul} / 27. July  1784 ^greg. In Moscow , † April 22 ^jul. / 4. May  1839 ^greg. In Moscow in the government of Simbirsk ) was a Russian officer , writer and poet .

Life

Dawydow was born into a noble Russian family and entered the guard cavalry regiment of the Russian army in 1801 and took part in the Russian campaigns in Germany, on the Danube and in Sweden . In the campaign of 1807 he earned the Order of Saint Anna 2nd Class and a golden saber with the inscription "For Bravery" in the battle of Preussisch Eylau . In 1809 he fought against the Turks under Prince Bagration in Moldova. After General Kamensky received the supreme command, Dawydow stepped under the command of Kulnyev and served as a captain in the vanguard of the Moldovan army. At the suggestion of Prince Bagration, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on April 8, 1812 and appointed commander of the 1st battalion of the Akhtyrka Hussar Regiment.

After the French invasion of 1812, his hussars led the band of Prince Wassilschikow , he kept in constant contact with the enemy when the 2nd Western Army withdrew. He then fought as part of the 4th Cavalry Corps under Major General Sievers at Mir and on July 11 at Saltanovka. At the initiative of General Barclay de Tolly, he formed a corps of partisans with whom he organized the partisan struggle against Napoleon . In 1814 Davydov served in a hussar regiment under Blücher and was promoted to major general in 1815 .

1825-27 he was active in Persia, and in 1831 he fought in Poland in front of Warsaw and in the Battle of Lisbik so gloriously that he was appointed lieutenant general .

Denis Davydov's tomb on the grounds of the Novodevichy Convent

Davydov died in May 1839 on his estate near Moscow. His grave, where he was honored as a hero of the Patriotic War in 1812 , is on the grounds of the Novodevichy Monastery .

Davydow wrote stories with liberal-political content, and he also wrote - mostly in the bivouac - satires , elegies , dithyrambs and epistles . His soldier songs became particularly well known. The memories of the Battle of Prussian Eylau and the attempt at the theory of the partisan war (1821) are believed to be the best of his military writings . Smirdin (St. Petersburg 1848) published his collected works with biography; his memoirs appeared in a magazine in 1872. Pushkin had great respect for him and Tolstoy immortalized him in his novel War and Peace in the character of Denisov.

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• Meyer's New Lexicon in eight volumes, Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1963
• Russian literary history in individual portraits by Alexander Eliasberg , Greifenverlag zu Rudolstadt and Berlin, 2009