The same, according to Alexander Pushkin, "Noble Sheremetev" received many awards for his military exploits and merits in the diplomatic field. Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, whose biography is described below, became one of the first field marshals in Russia and a large landowner, he was the first in the history of the Russian state to be granted the dignity of a count. An ardent associate of Peter I, who had a close origin with him, was engaged in state affairs for more than half a century, was married twice, had eight children, and by the end of his life had acquired a huge number of possessions. It is worth reading a short biography of Boris Sheremetev.
Ancient boyar family
Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, the first to be granted the title of Russian count, came from the most prominent boyar family of the Russian state. The beginning of the huge “Sheremetev fortune” was laid by the marriage of his heir to the daughter of Prince A. M. Cherkassky, an outstanding statesman under Peter I. Its first owner, Count N. P. Sheremetev, remained known to Russian history as a philanthropist who founded the Kuskovo and Ostankino estates near Moscow.
The origins of the Sheremetevs (like the Romanovs) go back to Andrei Kobyla, a Moscow boyar from the time of Ivan Kalita. Among the ancestors of Boris Petrovich Sheremetv, whose brief biography will be discussed later, there are many boyars, governors, governors. Some of them achieved a high position due to personal merit, others - by kinship with the royal dynasty. For example, Elena Ivanovna, the great-granddaughter of the founder of the family, Andrei Konstantinovich Sheremet, was married to the son of Ivan the Terrible, whom the tsar killed in a fit of anger in 1581.
The influence of the Sheremetevs on state affairs increased significantly in the seventeenth century. Fedor Ivanovich, who died two years before the birth of Boris Petrovich, contributed to the ascension to the throne of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov and was an ardent supporter of strengthening the influence of the Zemsky Sobor in matters of state administration. His cousin, Pyotr Nikitich, was in Pskov at the head of the defense against False Dmitry II. The Count's branch of the Sheremetevs originates precisely from Boris Petrovich, who was granted this title for putting down the uprising in Astrakhan.
Among the Sheremetevs were not only military leaders and diplomats, but also creative personalities. For example, Boris Sergeevich Sheremetev, who was born in 1822, studied music. The composer wrote a romance based on the words of the poem "I loved you" by A. Pushkin, "I still yearn for longing" to the words of F. Tyutchev and so on.
The family of the first count in Russia
By the standards of the middle of the seventeenth century, the closest relatives of Boris Petrovich were educated people who, communicating with foreigners, took all the best from them. The father of one of the first general field marshals in Russia, Pyotr Vasilievich Sheremetev, spent most of his life in court service, accompanied Tsar Alexei on his pious campaigns, attended receptions of foreign embassies and high-ranking guests. He participated in the wars with Sweden and the Commonwe alth, a campaign against Riga. Pr Fyodor Alekseevich became a nobleman, but the relatives of the new tsar decided to remove the influential statesman from Moscow and arranged an appointment to Tobolsk, and then to Kyiv.
Boris Petrovich's mother, Anna Fedorovna Volynskaya, traced her lineage to Prince Bobrok-Volynsky, the hero of the Battle of Kulikovo. She became the first wife of Peter Vasilyevich. The marriage produced five sons and one daughter. Boris was the eldest child in the family - he was born on April 25 (May 5), 1652. Three years later Fedor was born, then Ivan, Vasily (1659), Vladimir (1668) and Maria. All the children of Anna and Peter Sheremetev (except for Ivan, who died in 1682) occupied a prominent position among those close to the court. After the death of Anna Fedorovna, Pyotr Vasilyevich remarried Maria Ivanovna Shishkina (Samarina).
Boris Sheremetev's childhood
The offspring of an ancient family from an early age was familiar with the elements of the culture and lifestyle of Europeans. The father of the future count, Pyotr Vasilyevich, shaved his beard andwore a Polish dress, which strikingly distinguished him from his contemporaries. But no one said a word to Sheremetev because of his outstanding administrative and military talents.
The boyar arranged his eldest son for the Kyiv collegium (later the academy). The young man knew Latin and could speak Polish fluently. He was very fond of Kyiv, through which the Europeanization of the state initially took place and the younger generation was introduced to the culture of Western Europe.
Serving at the court of Alexei Mikhailovich
The life path of the owner of the estate on Fontanka was typical for that time. Young people usually began the service at the age of fifteen and completed it when they received their retirement due to old age. For more than half a century, Boris Petrovich did not belong to himself, he served the Tsar and the Fatherland. This, by the way, explains the late marriages of many representatives of the nobility, and the dependence of the landowner, who is not able to independently deal with economic affairs, from the managers.
At the age of thirteen, he entered the service under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Boris Sheremetev performed the duties of a room steward. There is some documentary evidence of what exactly he did. Young Boris Petrovich accompanied the tsar on trips to the monasteries, served in the rooms, during ceremonies he stood in full dress near the throne, and on the hunt he played the role of Alexei Mikhailovich's squire. The young nobleman's career progressed slowly.
He received the boyar rank only in his thirties. This isallowed to govern the state, that is, to sit in the Duma and carry out the orders of the sovereign both in the military and in the diplomatic field.
Military career of a young nobleman
In military affairs and diplomacy, Sheremetev stood out during the regency of Sofia Alekseevna. But after a quarrel with Sophia's favorite, Prince Golitsyn, he was sent to command the troops defending the borders of the state in Belgorod. Being far from the capital, Boris Petrovich could not choose between Tsarevna Sophia and her half-brother Peter I. Of course, the future major military leader joined the winning side, being among the tsar's supporters. In the military field, Boris Petrovich proved himself in the Crimean and Azov campaigns, where he commanded an army that acted against the Crimean Tatars, but his actions on the battlefields of the Northern War brought him real fame.
Sheremetyev's diplomatic skills
At first, Peter I did not trust Sheremetev, but found it possible to entrust him with a number of diplomatic affairs. Before that, the nobleman participated in the signing of the Eternal Peace with the Commonwe alth and headed the embassy sent to Warsaw. Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, whose biography by that time already included certain merits in diplomatic activity, under Peter I went on a diplomatic mission to Europe.
Diplomatic assignments on this trip were unspoken. In the order of Peter between the lines, one can understand the need to search for allies in Europe. During the trip, Sheremetev visited M alta, where he was awarded the title of Chevalierorders of knights, Austria, Poland and Italy. This greatly expanded the horizons of the boyar, so that upon returning to Moscow, Boris Sheremetev began to cut the beards and hems of the caftans.
Relationship with Peter I
The future count was an ardent supporter of Peter I. He supported the young sovereign, realizing that Russia needed reforms. Boris Petrovich Sheremetev spoke only positively about the reforms of Peter the Great. The Russian sovereign and the nobleman, in general, were united by fairly close relations, although there were periods when Peter did not trust Boris Petrovich and even assigned an assistant to him, who was supposed to monitor the actions of the military leader in Astrakhan. Interestingly, in his will, Sheremetev asked to become the executor of the tsar himself, appealing to the fact that his ancestors had Mikhail and Alexei Romanov as executors of their last will.
Participation in the Northern War
Boris Petrovich Sheremetev during the battles of the Northern War commanded the cavalry, participated in the unsuccessful Battle of Narva. At this time, his talent as a commander and patriotism were revealed. Despite the defeat, the tsar wrote a letter of encouragement to the commander and made him general-in-chief. At the beginning of 1701, Boris Sheremetev waged the so-called small war, and at the end of the year he led the army on a campaign against Livonia, participated in the battle at Erestfer.
At the end of December 1701 Sheremetev defeated the Swedes, and then undertook another campaign against Livonia. For the first victory, he received the rank of Field Marshal and the Order of St. Andrew. At the end of the summer of 1702, the commander occupied Marienburg with his army and captured Martha Skavronskaya, who then ended up in the service of Peter I, and later became empress under the name of Catherine I (first as the wife of the ruling Tsar Peter, and then as the ruling empress).
In 1705 Sheremetev was sent to Astrakhan to suppress the rebellion. For the successful execution of the order, Boris Petrovich was elevated to the dignity of a count, and his son Mikhail received the rank of colonel of the local infantry regiment. In addition, the tsar rewarded his faithful commander with land holdings in the Yaroslavl province and an annual salary of ten thousand rubles. After the field marshal returned to the army.
In 1710 the commander took Riga, for which he received a house in the city. In 1711, Boris Sheremetev participated in the Prut campaign and was forced to sign a peace treaty on unfavorable terms, leaving his son Mikhail Borisovich as a pledge.
Pretty aged, tired and big Sheremetev wanted to get a haircut as a monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in 1712, but instead he married a young beauty - Naryshkin's widow Anna Petrovna Slatykova (nee). Since then, Sheremetev settled in Kyiv, and traveled to St. Petersburg or Moscow only with reports on what was happening in Little Russia.
In 1715 Boris Sheremetev was sent to Pomerania and Mecklenburg to command an expeditionary force. It was necessary to carry out joint actions against the Swedes with the Prussian king.
Marriage to the daughter of the steward Alexei Chirikov
BAt the age of seventeen, Boris Sheremetev married Evdokia (Avdotya) Alekseevna Chirikova, the daughter of the stolnik Alexei Panteleevich and Fedosya Pavlovna. The only daughter of we althy parents possessed with a rich dowry. The seventh volume of A. Barsukov's work "The Sheremetev Family" contains a list: an estate in the village of Kireevskoye with villages in the Alatyrsky district, the village of Paniny Prudy, villages in the Ryazan district and things worth four thousand rubles.
On the occasion of his marriage, Boris Petrovich received a royal gift - four thousand rubles and two hundred households in a village in the Rzhev district. From this began his possessions, which by the end of his life turned the boyar into a large landowner. He was constantly busy with the service, so he entrusted the management of the villages to the elders, stewards and house office.
Evdokia Alekseevna Sheremeteva in 1671 gave birth to a daughter, Sophia, in 1672, the heir, Mikhail, and in 1673, another daughter, Anna. She died about 1697. Daughters Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, the biography is described above, married early. Sophia in marriage became Princess Urusova, Anna married Count Golovin and already in 1718 became a widow. The widow and children of his son Alexei Boris Sheremetev, by will, gave the possessions of his first wife.
Second marriage to widow Anna Naryshkina
In 1712, the sixty-year-old field marshal remarried. The chosen one of the military leader was the 25-year-old widow Anna Petrovna Naryshkina (by her first marriage), nee S altykova. Her first marriage was to an uncle of Peter I, from her former husband she had a daughter, Anna.
Fromsecond marriage, Boris Petrovich had five children. The first son, Peter Borisovich, was born in 1714 in Priluki, the second son, Sergei-August, was born in Poland in 1715. The boy was baptized by the Polish king. Therefore, Sheremetev's son has a double name. Thus, an Orthodox child was baptized by the head of a Catholic state. This was due to political reasons and symbolized the union between the countries. In 1716, the daughter Vera was born, and four months before the death of her father, in November 1717, the youngest daughter of Boris Petrovich Ekaterina was born.
The legacy of the military leader Sheremetev
By the end of his life, Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev owned eighteen estates, in which almost twenty thousand souls of serfs lived. Pyotr Borisovich became the main heir of a prominent military leader and statesman. At the time of the will, the boy was only five years old.
In those days, the law obliged the nobles to allocate only one heir (at the free choice of the testator, that is, it could not be the eldest son). This order was introduced to force young nobles who did not inherit their father's estate to enter the service. The rest of the children received precious icons and financial support in the amount of about three thousand rubles a year, and Boris Petrovich did not mention his youngest daughter Ekaterina at all in his will.
Soon the order of single inheritance was canceled, but the descendants of Count Sheremetev remained offended. Many of them were sure that Pyotr Borisovich (pictured below), the heir to his father's estates, "robbed" them. materialclaims were filed by four generations of the field marshal's family.
Count Boris Petrovich Sheremetev died after a severe illness in Moscow in February 1719. He did not live a couple of months to sixty-seven years. The coffin with the body of the deceased was buried on the territory of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg.
All economic affairs after the death of Sheremetev fell on the shoulders of his widow Anna Naryshkina. The countess died in 1728 at a relatively young age - almost 42 years old. The son of Boris Petrovich, Pyotr Borisovich, moved to St. Petersburg in the thirties of the 18th century, setting up the main residence of the count's family in the Fountain House.
