Nicholas Repnin

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Prince Nicholas Repnin

Prince Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin (March 11, 1734 N.S. — May 12, 1801 N.S.) was a Russian statesman and general from the Repnin princely family who played a key role in the downfall of Polish statehood.

Rule of Poland

Prince Repnin served under his father, Prince Vasily Anikitovich, during the Rhenish campaign of 1748 and subsequently resided for some time abroad, where he acquired "a thoroughly sound German education." He also participated in the Seven Years' War in a subordinate capacity. Peter III sent him as ambassador in 1763 to Berlin. The same year Catherine transferred him to Warsaw as minister plenipotentiary, where he would have an affair with Izabela Fleming.[link].

In effect, due to the level of Russian control of the Polish government, he was an effective ruler of the country[link] [link] with special instructions to form a Russian party in Poland from among the dissidents, who were to receive equal rights with the Catholics. Repnin convinced himself that the dissidents were too poor and insignificant to be of any real support to Russia, and that the whole agitation in their favor was factitious. At last, indeed, the dissidents themselves even petitioned the empress to leave them alone.

In order to further Russian goals, he encouraged the formation of two protestant konfederacjas (of Sluck and Toruń) and later, one Catholic (Radom Confederation, led by Karol Stanisław "Panie Kochanku" Radziwiłł) [link]. It is clear from his correspondence that Repnin, a singularly proud and high-spirited man, much disliked the very dirty work he was called upon to do[link]. Nevertheless he faithfully obeyed his instructions, and, by means more or less violent or discreditable, forced the diet of 1767-1768 (Repnin Sejm) to concede everything. Before the Sejm, he ordered the capture and exile to Kaluga of some vocal opponents of his policies[link] [link], namely Józef Andrzej Załuski[link] and Wacław Rzewuski. The immediate result was the Confederation of Bar, which practically destroyed the ambassador's handiwork.

Military career

Repnin resigned his post for the more congenial occupation of fighting the Turks. At the head of an independent command in Moldavia and Walachia, he prevented a large Turkish army from crossing the Pruth (1770); distinguished himself at the actions of Larga and Kagul; and captured Izmail and Kilia. In 1771 he received the supreme command in Walachia and routed the Turks at Bucharest. A quarrel with the commander-in-chief, Rumyantsev, then induced him to send in his resignation, but in 1774 he participated in the capture of Silistria and in the negotiations which led to the peace of Kuchuk-Kainarji. In 1775-76 he was ambassador at the Porte.

On the outbreak of the war of the Bavarian Succession he led 30,000 men to Breslau, and at the subsequent congress of Teschen, where he was Russian plenipotentiary, compelled Austria to make peace with Prussia. During the second Turkish war (1787-92) Repnin was, after Suvorov, the most successful of the Russian commanders. He defeated the Turks at Salcha, captured the whole camp of the seraskier, Hassan Pasha, shut him up in Izmail, and was preparing to reduce the place when he was forbidden to do so by Potemkin (1789). On the retirement of Potemkin in 1791, Repnin succeeded him as commander-in-chief, and immediately routed the grand vizier at Machin, a victory which compelled the Turks to accept the truce of Galatz (July 31, 1791).

Declining years

After the Second Partition of Poland, he was made governor-general of the newly acquired Lithuanian provinces, where he also commanded the Russian forces during the Kosciuszko Insurrection. The Emperor Paul raised him to the rank of field-marshal (1796), and, in 1798, sent him on a diplomatic mission to Berlin and Vienna in order to detach Prussia from France and unite both Austria and Prussia against the Jacobins. Unsuccessful, he was dismissed from service upon his return.

Although he had a misbegotten son, Ivan Pnin, and it was widely rumoured that Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was the fruit of Repnin's liaison with Izabela Fleming, his legitimate children were three daughters. Upon his death, as the male line of the Repnins became extinct, Alexander I permitted his grandson Prince Nikolai Volkonsky to take the name Repnin and coat of arms of his grandfather.

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