Pytor Chernyshev
{{Short description|Russian nobleman, diplomat, privy counsellor, chamberlain and senator}}
File:RusPortraits_v2-134_Le_comte_Pierre_Grigoriewitch_Tchernycheff.jpg.]]
Count Pyotr{{efn|On occasions, Piotr}} Grigoryevich Chernyshev ({{Langx|ru|Граф Пётр Григорьевич Чернышёв}}; 24 March 1712 – 20 August 1773) was a Russian Imperial nobleman, diplomat, privy counsellor, chamberlain, and senator.
Early life
A member of the Chernyshyov family, he was the son of {{interlanguage link|Grigory Chernyshev|ru|Чернышёв, Григорий Петрович}} (1672–1745) and Avdotya Rzhevskaya (1693–1747).{{cite book |last1=Rounding |first1=Virginia |title=Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power |date=22 January 2008 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-0-312-37863-9 |page=39 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DKXjw2uS4eoC&pg=PA39 |access-date=7 April 2023 |language=en}} Among his siblings were mayor of Moscow, Count Zakhar Chernyshev and Imperial Russian Field Marshal and General Admiral Count Ivan Chernyshyov.{{cite book |last1=Kistler |first1=Charles E. |title=British Diplomacy and Russia During the Seven Years' Wars |date=1946 |publisher=University of Michigan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lhVreOHrkiwC |access-date=7 April 2023 |language=en}}
His father was a close friend of Peter the Great, who was also Pyotr's godfather.{{cite book|first=Aleksandr|last=Popov|title=Два Петербурга. Мистический путеводитель|language=Russian|publisher=Litres|year=2018|isbn=9785457431782}}
Career
Pyotr enlisted in the Preobrazhensky Regiment as a child and from 1722 to 1727 served under the young Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (1700-1739) as a page, Kammerpage and finally lieutenant-captain.{{cite web|url=https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/01.+Paintings/168245|title=Portrait of Princess Natalia Golitsyna|publisher=Hermitage Museum|accessdate=17 April 2019}} In 1741, during the reign of Empress Anna of Russia, he was made ambassador extraordinary to Denmark and soon afterwards ambassador extraordinary to the Kingdom of Prussia, then ruled by Frederick the Great.
Next, in 1746, he was posted to London, assisting at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession between April and October 1748. He helped edit the treaty between Louis XIV and the maritime powers that resulted from the Congress, signed on 18 October 1748 - it settled the succession question and maritime questions and was recognised by Silesia and Prussia.{{cite book |last1=Solovyov |first1=Sergei Mikhailovich |title=History of Russia: A new empress: Peter III and Catherine II, 1761-1762 |date=1976 |publisher=Academic International Press |isbn=978-0-87569-066-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8iomAQAAMAAJ |access-date=7 April 2023 |language=en}}
Personal life
File:David Lüders Chernyshev1.jpg, and their daughters Anna, Darya and Natalya, and their son Grigory, by David Lüders, 1750]]
Count Chernyshev married Ekaterina Chernysheva (1715–1779), the daughter of {{ill|Andrei Ushakov|ru|Ушаков, Андрей Иванович}}. Ekaterina was maid of honour to Empress Anna of Russia, as well as favourite and confidante of Anna Leopoldovna. Together, they were the parents of:{{cite book |last1=FitzLyon |first1=Kyril |last2=Zinovieff |first2=Kyril |last3=Hughes |first3=Jenny |title=The Companion Guide to St Petersburg |date=2003 |publisher=Companion Guides |isbn=978-1-900639-40-8 |page=380 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u8D75IzFL4YC&pg=PA380 |access-date=7 April 2023 |language=en}}
- Countess Darya Petrovna Chernyshyova (1739–1802), a friend of the French painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun; she married Field Marshal Count Ivan Petrovich Saltykov in 1769.{{cite book|first=Evgeniy Vladimirovich|last=Pchelov|title=Рюриковичи. История династии|language=Russian|publisher=ОЛМА Медиа Групп|year=2001|isbn=9785224031603|page=222}}
- Countess Natalya Petrovna Chernyshyova (1741–1837), inspiration for Pushkin's The Queen of Spades; she married Prince Vladimir Borisovich Golitsyn in 1766.{{cite web|url=http://aleksandr-suvorov.ru/articles/vydayuwiesya-predstaviteli-russkogo-dvoryanstva/knyaginya-natalya-petrovna-golicyna/|title=Княгиня Наталья Петровна Голицына|language=Russian|publisher=aleksandr-suvorov.ru|accessdate=19 April 2019}}{{cite web|first=Elena|last=Petrova|url=http://www.spb.aif.ru/society/people/tayny_pikovoy_damy_kak_golicyna_stala_proobrazom_pushkinskoy_geroini/|title=Тайны Пиковой дамы. Как Голицына стала прообразом пушкинской героини|language=Russian|publisher=spb.aif.ru|date=3 December 2015|accessdate=19 April 2019}}
Count Chernyshev died of dropsy in Saint Petersburg and was buried at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in the Lazarevskoe Cemetery.{{cite web|url=http://www.lavraspb.ru/ru/nekropol/view/item/id/1352/catid/3|title=Entry on www.lavraspb.ru|language=Russian}} His tomb inscription reads "His life was cut short by multiplying diseases, to the extreme sorrow of his neighbours and to the sincere grief of his friends and admirers". The later historian Pyotr Vladimirovich Dolgorukov wrote that "He was an intelligent and talented man, but immensely arrogant, unusually vain and intolerably arrogant; nobody loved him."{{in lang|ru}} Записки князя Петра Долгорукова. — СПб, 2007.- 604 с.
Awards
References
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Category:18th-century diplomats of the Russian Empire
Category:Counts of the Russian Empire
Category:Burials at Lazarevskoe Cemetery (Saint Petersburg)
Category:Ambassadors of the Russian Empire to Prussia
Category:Ambassadors of the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom