1. Fyodor Rostopchin was disgraced shortly after the Congress of Vienna, to which he had accompanied Tsar Alexander I Fyodor Rostopchin appears as a character in Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace, in which he is presented very unfavorably.
19 Facts About Fyodor Rostopchin
1. 2.
Fyodor Rostopchin claimed that his family was very ancient and originated around the 15th century from Crimean Tatars, direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
3.
Fyodor Rostopchin spent most of his childhood and youth at his father's family estate in the Kosmodemyanskoe village where he received home education.
4.
Fyodor Rostopchin was fluent in English, German, French and Italian languages, and from 1786 to 1788 he traveled to Europe.
5.
Fyodor Rostopchin described it in his first book The Trip to Prussia which has been compared to the Letters of a Russian Traveller by Nikolay Karamzin.
6.
Feodor Fyodor Rostopchin started his military career as a member of the Preobrazhensky Regiment in 1775, and in 1785 he was promoted to Podporuchik.
7.
Fyodor Rostopchin took part in the Russo-Swedish War and the Russo-Turkish War.
8.
Fyodor Rostopchin spent 10 years living in his family estate and writing comedies and satirical novels in which he ridiculed Francophiles.
9.
Fyodor Rostopchin was restored to favor in 1810 as conditions between France and Russia began to deteriorate.
10.
Fyodor Rostopchin was visited by Germaine de Stael on her way to St Petersburg and Stockholm.
11.
Fyodor Rostopchin was invited to the council at Fili but excluded after a few hours and had the remaining population of the city evacuated, including all the city administrators and officials, leaving behind only a few French tutors, foreign shop keepers.
12.
Fyodor Rostopchin had left a small detachment of police, whom he charged with burning his house and the city to the ground, given that most buildings were made from wood.
13.
Fyodor Rostopchin left Moscow on 14 September 1812 and gave up his position as governor.
14.
Fyodor Rostopchin owned two mansions in Moscow and an estate near Tarutino, Russia.
15.
Robert Wilson was with him, when Fyodor Rostopchin set fire to his estate.
16.
When later on in his memoirs Count Fyodor Rostopchin explained his actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the departure of the inhabitants.
17.
Fyodor Rostopchin claimed innocence against the charge of arson, and had a pamphlet printed and distributed in Paris proclaiming so in 1823, but subsequently admitted to his role in ordering the city's destruction.
18.
Fyodor Rostopchin returned to Imperial Russia in 1825 and died in Moscow suffering from asthma and hemorrhoid complications.
19.
Fyodor Rostopchin married Ekaterina Petrovna Protassova, and had eight children.