Matwei Alexandrovich Dmitriev-Mamonov

Count Matwei Alexandrovich Dmitriev-Mamonov

Count Matwei Alexandrowitsch Dmitrijew-Mamonow ( Russian Матвей Александрович Дмитриев-Мамонов ; * September 14th ^July / 25th September  1790 ^reg. In Moscow ; † June 11th ^July / 23 June  1863 ^reg. On the Wassilijew estate Moscow city area) was a Russian statesman and man of letters, organizer and head of the Mamonov Regiment at the time of the Napoleonic Wars , major general (1813), founder of the pre-Decabrian Russian order of knights. He had a significant fortune, including the Dubrovitsi estate near Moscow. In 1825 he refused to take the oath on Nicholas I and was declared insane. He spent the rest of his life under the supervision of the Wassiliewskoje estate, known as the Mamonovsche Datscha.

Life

youth

He received a home education. In January 1807 he was appointed chamberlain , since 9/21. April 1811 he was, thanks to the protection of the Minister of Justice II Dmitrijew, Senior Procuror of the 6th (Moscow) Criminal Affairs Department of the Senate. During these years he approached the Moscow Freemasons, especially MI Newsorow and NI Novikow, and rose quickly from the lower ("Johannite") to the higher ("three-third") ranks and in 1807 was already a grandmaster.

Literary activity

In the years 1811 to 1812 he published in Newsorov's magazine "Freund der Jugend" (" Друг юношества ") a cycle of poems, influenced by the poetry of Bobrov and Derschavin . In his literary work he joined Karamsin's opponents - the so-called "archaists". He dealt with the study of the Pugachev uprising .

Military service

At the beginning of the Patriotic War in 1812, he gave a patriotic speech to the Moscow court society, which made a tremendous impression on society. The text of this speech has not survived, although Pushkin later described it as "immortal". Mamonov offered the government to spend all of his income on waging war, with only 10,000 rubles a year, and agreed to mobilize his peasants. The tsar thanked him for his commitment and suggested that the count set up a cavalry regiment within the Moscow Landwehr at his own expense.

On July 23rd / 4th August 1812 he joined the Moscow Landwehr and took part in the battles of Borodino , Tarutino and Malojaroslavets . The formation of the regiment, which was named 1st Mounted Cossack Regiment, Count MA Dmitrijew-Mamonow, after its chief, proceeded sluggishly, although the popular cavalry colonel Prince BA Svyatopol-Tschetwertinsky had been appointed as the commander. The regiment consisted partly of the count's serfs, but partly also of recruited volunteers. The officers came from the Moscow court society. Prince PA Vyazemsky , who later wrote about this period , also belonged to them :

Cossack of the Mamonov Regiment

"Рифмы прочь, и перья в папку,
И долой мой модный фрак,
Я надел медвежью шапку,
Я макмоновский."

"Away with the rhymes, the feathers in the folder,
and down with my fashionable tailcoat,
I'm wearing a bearskin hat,
I'm a Mamonov Cossack."

On 19./31. August the regiment comprised a total of 56 officers, 59 NCOs and 186 men and only had 81 horses. Although the regiment did not take part in battles, it was used to maintain order when the army withdrew from Moscow and crossed the Moscow River at the Dorogomilovsky Gate. Dmitrijew-Mamonow himself received the award for bravery " Golden Sword for Bravery " for his courage demonstrated in Tarutinsk and Malojaroslawez

In the wake of the regiment's relocation to the Yaroslavl governorate, the loss of the ammunition bought in Moscow and the sacking of the villages of Mamonov, the regiment's further formation was dragged on. At the beginning of January 1813, 10 squadrons (hundreds) comprised 60 officers, 96 non-commissioned officers and 389 Cossacks.

On March 12/24, 1813 the order was issued to reorganize the First Cossack Regiment into the Uhlan Regiment Count MA Mamonow, consisting of 6 squadrons; he himself was appointed chief of the regiment and promoted to major general. In April the regiment was transferred to Serpukhov , but in the summer it finally went into the field. “The Count was always vain, but these awards completely turned his head. In addition, he had never been prepared for military service and had none of the skills necessary to lead a regiment. There were irregularities and misunderstandings. Before the regiment was finally set up, he fought a duel with one of his staff officers, probably Tolbuchin, ”observed Prince Vyasjemskij [1].

In 1814 the regiment took part in combat operations and reached the city of Fortlouis in France. In his youthful inexperience, the regiment chief was unable to maintain discipline among his men (when the regiment was set up in Yaroslavl, his Cossacks were referred to as “mothers' boys”, and in Serpukhov an investigation was even initiated due to unrest); there were clashes with the Austrian allies and the local population, and a town in Germany went up in flames. On August 27th / 8th September 1814, the Mamonow regiment was disbanded, and he himself was posted to commander of the First Cavalry Corps, General FP Uvarow. After the end of the war, he stood with the commander of the second mounted fighter division. On 2./14. In March 1816 he took his leave after a conflict with Tsar Alexander I , to whom he had written a critical letter about the dissolution of his regiment (formally he took his leave for health reasons).

Socio-political action

In 1812 he established the Russian Order of Knights, which was initially a purely Masonic institution, but in the years 1814/15 under the influence of MF Orlov , it changed into one of the first pre-Decabrian organizations. He drew up programmatic documents for the order, in 1816 he printed the brochure “Brief Instructions for Russian Knights” in an edition of 25 copies (in French; a copy of the Russian original has been preserved) in the Typographic Institute of the Moscow Mediko-Surgical Academy . Mamonov's constitutional projects were launched in 1906 by A. K. Borosdin published. You saw u. a. the abolition of serfdom and the transformation of Russia into an aristocratic republic with a bicameral parliament (with a chamber of hereditary peers and a chamber of representatives). One of the objectives of the order was "to remove all influence on state affairs from non-residents" and "the final overthrow, but possibly the death of all non-residents who hold state offices". As a non-resident "one must also consider the great-grandson of a non-resident in the order, whose ancestors from great-grandfather to father belonged to the Greco-Russian religion, served the Russian throne and retained their citizenship without leaving Russia". This regulation was directed straight against Alexander I, who in Mamonov's opinion was a non-resident (paragraph 53 of the statutes of the order), since he was the great-grandson of the Holsteiner Peter III. and was also often absent from Russia. As a means of bringing about the transformation, the count proposed military overthrow.

The Dubrowitzij estate, where the count lived in seclusion

After his return from abroad in 1817, he retired to his estate near Moscow, where he lived completely withdrawn until 1823 and only rarely went to Moscow:

“For a few years he did not even see one of his servants. Everything he needed was in a special room; there he also left his written orders. Strange pictures of cabalistic , but often also erotic content hung on the walls of his bedroom . ”[1].

According to the historians of the 19th century, the Count began to show signs of mental confusion as early as 1817, which was evident in his inclination to a secluded lifestyle and in the fact that he demonstratively grew his beard and wore a “Russian tunic”. According to modern researchers, especially JM Lotman , such an extravagant lifestyle on its own cannot be regarded as evidence of mental weakness. Contemporaries and memoirists agree that the count had a very self-centered, proud and quick-tempered character, always emphasized his aristocratic origins, and did not consider it necessary to withdraw in correspondence with those of higher rank. In addition, Mamonov maintained close contacts with members of secret societies; MF Orlov visited him a few times on his estate. This worried those in power, fueled by MK Gribowki's statements about the activities of secret societies. From the beginning of the 1820s the count was under surveillance by the secret police.

Demonstrating his own independence, he built a veritable fortress with guns and a detachment of soldiers made up of his serfs on his Dubrowitsi estate, 35 werst before the gates of Moscow, at the confluence of the Decna and Pachra rivers. In his declared contempt for the Romanovs and their claim to the throne, which he regarded as null and void, he kept the banner of Prince DM Poscharski and the blood-stained shirt of Tsarevich Dimitri Ivanovich - the symbol of the Rurikids dynasty par excellence.

Although they did not have the title of prince, the Dmitryev-Mamonovs were no less proud of their descent from Vladimir Monomakh . The thought of belonging to the Rurikids lived in the consciousness of a member of the Dmitryev family (the younger line of the sex), the literary man MA Dmitriev, a nephew of the famous poet II Dmitriev, as early as the mid-19th century. In his memoirs he wrote:

"We descend in a straight line from Vladimir Monomakh, in the male line, not through the female line, like the Romanovs - these pseudo descendants of our ruling house who are not even Romanovs, but descend from the Holsteiners."

Arrest and declaration of insanity

In 1823 the count's valet died and a new one was hired, the freed man, Citizen Nikanor Afanassjew, a former serf of Prince PM Volkonsky, the chief of the “Supreme Staff” and one of the leaders of the political police, to whom the denunciation had already been made Gribowskis in 1822. In this denunciation he told him about the unexpected activation of the "long believed to be extinct" Russian order of knights and openly mentioned the name Mamonov. According to the testimony of the son of the teacher of Russian literature in Count Mamonov's house - P. Kitschejew - the new valet performed less of his servant duties, but spied on the count. He, since he suspected he was in the service of a government agent, ordered him to be flogged. The victim turned to the military governor Prince DW Golyzin in Moscow. The latter immediately sent his adjutant to Dubrovitzy, and when Mamonov chased him away, gendarmes and a detachment of soldiers appeared in the village and arrested the count.

From then on, Alexander I and Araktschejew took care of the matter personally. As Prince Vjasjemsky writes, "he was accused of irregularities in the administration of the estate, namely the oppression of the peasants not on the part of an absent landlord, but really on the part of the administrators" [1]. At the highest orders, Mamonov was placed under house arrest in his Moscow home. When DW Golyzins threatened to put him under a curator, Mamonov responded with an angry letter, in which he stated in particular:

“… You cannot put me under curate at all and you will not dare to, because I am neither a minor nor insane, because I do not hesitate to physically punish serfs employed in my house if, in my opinion, they deserve it: because the right serfs To beat with sticks is inextricably linked to the public and private law of the Russian state, because this right was inherited from our ancestors. (...) Your eminent person, even as a citizen of legal age, must know that you are not permitted to threaten an adult citizen and dignitary of the empire; and how dare you write something like this to me, a person who is above you in every way except on the rankings! "

At the end of his message, Mamonov agreed to clarify his relations with the governor in a duel. On February 28, he wrote to his old patron II Dmitrijew to mediate, but he had been retired for years and was unable to help him.

The medical commission appointed by DW Golyzin declared the count to be insane. At Golyzin's request, the Council of Ministers issued on June 23/5. July the decision to put him under a curator.

It would appear that Dmitriev-Mamonov was an ordinary snob, eccentric, and Frondeur, but the government feared that the influence of his money, his connections with secret society conspirators, and Orlov, who was in command of a division, might be sufficient, a rebellion or even attempting to overthrow.

In the course of the Decembrist uprising in 1825 , the Count, who had been under surveillance in Moscow until then, but not as a mentally ill, refused to Tsar Nicholas I the oath of allegiance and recognition of the legality of his rule. Then the use of cruel healing treatments began with the aim of making him give in or driving him insane. A relative of the count and one of his last guardians, NA Dmitriev-Mamonov, writes that “for the first time he was treated strictly and even cruelly, as evidenced by the straitjackets and bandages that were used to tie him to the bed I found it in his closet thirty years ago ”, while Fr. Kitscheev explains that“ the treatment began with pouring cold water over his head, which naturally drove the count to a frenzy ”.

The Mamonowsche Datscha, where the count spent the last 30 years until his death in complete seclusion, in 1913. He was not even allowed to enter the gardens.

From 1830 on, Mamonov was kept in strict isolation on the Wassilijewskoje estate on the Sparrow Hills , which was near Moscow at the time and which Prince Yusupov bought especially for this purpose . Because of Count Mamonov's long stay there, the manor was named "Mamonowsche Datscha" by the Muscovites. “Healing treatment” and mistreatment by the prison guards were not without effect: people who met the Count in the years 1840–1860 remember him as delusional and megalomaniac. He died of gangrene caused by inflammation from constantly wearing shirts moistened with perfume. He was buried in the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. With him the (first) counts line of the house of Dmitrijew-Mamonow expired.

Literary aftermath

Lina Steiner sees Mamonow as one of the role models for Pierre Visitow in Tolstoy's " War and Peace ".

family

His father was Count AM Dmitriev-Mamonov - adjutant general and favorite of Catherine II . His mother was the princess Darya Fjedorovna Scherbatowa. He was one of the richest landowners in Russia (in 1860 he owned 90,000 desjatins of land in 10 governorates and 29 counties, 15,000 male serfs, more than 200,000 rubles in state banknotes, valuables worth over 200,000 rubles, real estate in Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere).

Awards

• Order of St. Vladimir 4th class
• Order of Saint Anne 2nd class
• Golden sword "for bravery" (December 21, 1812)

Works

• Poems - in: Poets from 1790 to 1810 (Стихотворения // Поэты 1790–1810-х гг. - Л., 1971.)
• Criticism of the current state of Russia and plans for a future transformation - in: From letters and testimonies of the Decembrists (Критика современного состояния России и планы будущего будущего с6.
• Notes on the book Castèras - in: Russian Archives (По поводу книги Кастеры // Русский архив. - 1877. - Книга 3.)

literature

• Сочинения Дмитриева-Мамонова на сайте Lib.ru: Классика
• Словарь русских генералов, участников боевых действий против армии Наполеона Бонапарта в 1812–1815 гг. // Российский архив: Сб. - М., студия «ТРИТЭ» Н. Михалкова, 1996. - Т. VII. - С. 381-382. (Lexicon of Russian generals who took part in acts of war against Napoleon Bonaparte's army in the years 1812–1815, in: Russian Archives)
• Лотман Ю. М. Матвей Александрович Дмитриев-Мамонов - поэт, публицист и общественный деятель // О русской литерер. - СПб .: Искусство-СПб, 1997. - С. 348-412. (Lotman, JM: Matvei Alexandrowitsch Dmitriev-Mamonow - poet, publicist and figure in public life, in: On Russian literature)
• Дмитриев-Мамонов М. А. Письма к И. И. Дмитриеву и Д. В. Голицыну 25 февраля 1825 г. / Публ., Коммент. П. И. Бартенева // Русский архив, 1868. - Изд. 2-е. - М., 1869. - Стб. 962-969. (Dmitrijew-Mamonow, MA: Letters to II Dmitrijew and DW Golyzin from February 25, 1825, published and commented by PI Bartenjew, in: Russian Archives, 1868, 2nd edition. Moscow 1869, Sp. 962–969)
• Дмитриев-Мамонов М. А. Рассказы и замечания графа М. А. Дмитриева-Мамонова по поводу книги Кастеры // Русский архив, 1877. - Кн. 3rd - № 12. - С. 389-397. (Dmitrijew-Mamonow, MA: Tales and comments by Count MA Dmitrijew-Mamonow on the book Castèras, in: Russian Archives, 1877, Book 3, No. 12, Sp. 389–397)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Сайт Министерства обороны Российской Федерации (website of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation)
2. ↑ Бороздин А. К. Из писем и показаний декабристов. - М., 1906. - С. 147. (Borosdin, AK: From letters and testimonies of the Decembrists)
3. ↑ Лотман Ю. М. О русской литературе. - СПб, 1997. - С. 350. (Lotman, JM: On Russian Literature)
4. ↑ Дмитриев-Мамонов М. А. Письмо к князю Д. В. Голицыну от 23 февраля 1825 // Русский архив. - 1868. - Вып. 9. - Стб. 964-965. (Dmitriev-Mamonov. MA: Letter to Prince DW Golytsin of February 23, 1825, in: Russian Archive)
5. ↑ Дмитриев-Мамонов Н. А. Из воспоминаний: Граф Матвей Александрович Дмитриев-Мамонов // Русская старина. - 1890, апрель. - С. 176. (Dmitriev-Mamonov, NA: From my memories: Count Matvei Alexandrovitsch Dmitrijew-Mamonow, in: Das alten Russland)
6. ↑ Кичеев П. Из семейной памяти: Граф М. А. Дмитриев-Мамонов // Русский архив. - 1868. - № 1. - С. 99. (Kitschejew, P .: From family memories: Count MA Dmitrijew-Mamonow, in: Russian archive)
7. ^ Lina Steiner: For Humanity's Sake: The Bildungsroman in Russian Culture. Toronto 2011, ISBN 978-1-4426-4343-7 , p. 119.
8. ↑ According to some testimonies, Mamonov thought the Tsarina Katharina was his true mother. Vjasjemski writes: “Count Mamonov was a man with a great deal more talent than average, but he was spoiled by his birth and favorable circumstances. It was said that he even ascribed a meaning to his birth that it did not have and according to all calculations could not have. "