Battle Of The Nations - Tumblr Posts

So thanks to @microcosme11 who showed a lot of interest in the incredible painting “Battle of Leipzig” by Johann Peter Kraft I’ve decided to consecrate a series of posts to the main participants of the event depicted on the canvas!

It’s simply going to be a bunch of my guesses about who is who over there. 👀

Unfortunately I’m going to illustrate my ideas with such an amount of pictures that it’s simply a necessity to divide this post into several parts…

Well, as an old Russian saying goes, “Don’t feed me bread, just let my speak a lot about 19-century men in fancy uniforms”!

Ahem.

So here comes part 1!

First of all, let’s start with the most important participants - three allied monarchs themselves. Here they are: Alexander I of Russia, Franz II of Austria and Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. 👑

…Aaaaand I was lucky enough to find some old photos I took in the State Hermitage Museum during my last trip to Saint-Petersburg!

I guess Saint-Petersburg is at some point the second home for each and every lover of the Russian Empire. Even nowadays the city itself represents the living remains of that illustrious period in Russian history. :)

As for the paintings those epic depictions of allied monarchs are located in the Military Gallery of the Winter palace. The portrait of Franz II is also one of Kraft’s works which was presented by Kaiser himself to Alexander I when the latter decided to organise the Military Gallery (which is also dedicated to the victory of Leipzig, what a coincidence) in the 1820s while the portraits of Alexander and Friedrich were made by the German painter Franz Krüger who had been working for the Russian Imperial court for a long period of time.

All three of them look truly magnificent but it’s a little bit hard to find the right angle for a photo because they hang pretty high and are gigantic. 😅

Okay, back to the “Battle of Leipzig”~

Since monarchs were usually followed by an escort of their loyal courtiers, the exact same thing goes for the Kraft’s painting. This time for the major part it consists of different military men. I believe most of them come from the general headquarters.

There are three major figures accordingly behind Alexander, Franz and Friedrich - three chiefs-of-staff of the allied forces.

The first man in the crowd is (I’m still not entirely sure about him but it would be still logical to some extent) August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, quartermaster-general of the Silesian army and Blücher’s right-hand man.

The second one is probably (like I don’t know where his aiguillettes are but the resemblance is quite obvious) Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky, chief-of-staff in the Russian army.

He became one of the Alexander’s closest friends since he was introduced to him by his father Pavel I, the emperor of Russia, when Alexander was still a grand-duke (or how we call him in Russian - цесаревич / tsesarevich ✨).

By the way, Volkonsky and his colleague Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, a general who also went through all Napoleonic wars, were the only commanders in the Russian army who received the Grand Cross of the British Order of the Bath after all the struggles.

And here is Vorontsov as a small postcriptum. :)

Mikhail was the eldest son of Semyon Romanovich Vorontsov, a Russian diplomat who served as an ambassador in the United Kingdom for almost thirty years! That was the main reason why he knew English language as well as his mother tongue, Russian.

In the nearest troublesome future he and Wellington actually became very good friends as well! 🇷🇺🇬🇧

To be continued 🔜

Spent such a good day in one of the most famous and huge Russian libraries digging for some golden nuggets in terms of books on the Napoleonic era and Austrian affairs.

Feeling unbelievably calm and relieved. Haven’t experienced that in a long time. ❤️

And here is a meme as usual! The temptation was too strong. X)

(Oops, simple spelling mistakes but I’m too lazy to go and fix them…)

100th Anniversary celebration on the occasion of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig on Vienna's Schwarzenbergplatz 🥀

The 20th of October is here as well as the aftermath of the Völkerschacht: 209 years ago field-marshal Schwarzenberg had finished a letter to his beloved wife where he recited to her the events of the past four days and announced the decisive victory of the allied forces in the Battle of Leipzig. Then - exactly a hundred years later - people in Vienna celebrated one more anniversary of the Battle of the Nations. And since it was a round date, there exists a thorough photographic recording of that illustrious commemoration. 🎥🎞️

That’s what I’d love to present to you today. :)

At first, when I found those photos and looked through them all, I sensed some kind of a deja-vu. Probably because of how much documentary sources is left after the 100th anniversary celebration of the year of 1812 in Russia. We’ve seen a bunch of photo- and video reportages about it in various museums - with tsar Nicolas II and all of his relatives being present there, obviously. That’s probably why I felt an incredible joy while looking at this new chronicle I was able to discover.

It’s truly amazing - not only to learn about a historical epoch but also to see what impact it had on the times which followed. I can say with some amount of confidence: Napoleonic experience wasn’t always used for good - especially in the beginning of the 20th century. However, it’s part of the history to the same extent now and I’m inclined to perceive it in those forms that are available to us.

Especially when we can observe something - or someone - extraordinary in a very-very-very close proximity! 👁️👁️

You probably already know what I mean from the photos above, since they depict one of the most recognisable figures in Austrian history - of flesh and blood! 🇦🇹

But there’s one more important person who was officially present at a such formal and meaningful event! He also deserves recognition, undoubtedly, especially when we remember that the anniversary took place in October 1913. And - oh boy - what is coming catastrophically soon…

This, let me finally introduce you to these honourable (or maybe not so) gentlemen - here are one of the most renowned emperors in the modern European history, Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria, who had actually celebrated his 83rd Birthday two months ago, and an equally infamous Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand von Österreich-Este, who was murdered 9 months later in one world-famous Serbian city.

What can I say? Well, it’s… fascinating. Unbelievably fascinating to look at them both having a stroll through the capital city on an anniversary event which connected the distant Napoleonic past with their own present so tightly.

In my opinion, Franz Joseph could have definitely “felt the feels” at that time: after all, he was the one who stood at the opening ceremony of the same exact field-marshal Schwarzenberg’s monument in the year 1867. He was also an emperor whom three of prince Karl’s sons - Friedrich, Karl and Edmund - served faithfully until their dying breaths. Helped him secure his positions on an Austrian throne in the turbulent years of 1848 - 1849, for example.

And that’s the sort of ancestral aristocratic continuity that sometimes makes the head spin. 🏛️